


when hearts are enamoured

by tnevmucric



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - No Metaverse (Persona 5), Explicit Sexual Content, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hopeful Ending, Identity Issues, M/M, Misgendering, Non-Linear Narrative, OOC, POV First Person, Sexual Assault, Stream of Consciousness, Trans Character, sporadic tense changes, unbetad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25261765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: “anything you want is yours if you take up my offer”, he eventually replies. “money, better publicity—”, he tilts his head. “a reference from a well-respected psychiatrist to an even better endocrinologist. a plastic surgeon.” he slides the file back over to me. “legal guardianship, for the necessary paperwork. all you need to do is look at what i give you, and tell me what you see. it’s that simple.”it is, of course, never that simple. and yet... and yet names carry the weight of things. names are bathroom-passes and names are rare opals in rural mines. a name, my name, held so much weight.i would do anything to shake it off.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro & Niijima Makoto, Akechi Goro & Okumura Haru, Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro & Shido Masayoshi, Akechi Goro & Takamaki Ann, Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Shido Masayoshi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 30





	when hearts are enamoured

**Author's Note:**

> I have endured so long that I have forgotten everything.  
> —Arthur Rimbaud

He is staining the carpet.

It’s the first thing that draws my attention in the moment. This hand-woven carpet, worth approximately 2.5 million yen, is being stained by a quart of blood—and rising. This is the scent of a fresh body on the floor. This is the scent of alcohol and of blood and of everything I’ve just done hitting me all at once.

I’m trying to shake the feeling off my fingers, trying to misunderstand what it’s like to bludgeon a man to death—I’m shaking and shaking but none of it is coming off. His blood boils within me, intemperate and engaging, searching for a killswitch. Nothing matters tonight, nothing except this moment. The moment where I murdered my father and the moment his blood in me reacted to what I’ve done: _kill, kill, kill._ My breathing feels clogged, tears blurring his corpse into mess right before my eyes. My cheek is throbbing. My teeth feel loose. My hand clenches and unclenches around nothing.

This is the scent he revered in each time he took a life. This is that scent.

And the world—the world must really be magic if I can kill a man and get away with it. The world must be magic if I can stay up at 10:17 PM on a Monday night scrubbing blood out from under my nails, and there must be God, there must be God up there punishing me because this is not fulfilment. This is nowhere near feeling full. And this is not love. And this is everything I wanted and nothing I wanted at all. What good is it, I think, killing a man if there’s no man to kill? There’s a beast skipping the route to the autopsy table, a beast in my blood, a beast with gold eyes and gnarled spikes for nails and teeth that look like the roots of a pruned tree. A beast who took everything, who shook me up inside, who thundered in my ears and ruined my life.

The news reports say: _alone._

The news reports claim: _tragic death._

Sometime after I am sitting in Ren Amamyia’s passenger seat, falling asleep as an ice pack sweats at my feet. I am in his passenger seat, rubbed so raw and clean by antiseptic that my skin must be as fresh as a newborn’s. My fingertips sting. What’s left of my clothes have been disposed of with some nondescript sheets and I am swamped in Ren’s jumper. His shoes don’t fit me, big enough that I have to pull the laces around my ankles to make sure they don’t fall off, and the drawstring of his pants is tied several times to get them to stay put around my hips. The windscreen wipers are hypnotic, but no rain is falling. My hand is clenched tightly on Ren’s thigh, twisted in his jeans.

“Seatbelt”, I think I said, once the initial shock had worn off. “Put on your seatbelt, the road is wet.”

There is still smoke in the sky. I still smell like alcohol, but it’s not from the antiseptic wipes.

If I keep one eye trained in the side mirror, Ren doesn’t mention it.

* * *

Our first meeting was hostile. My glance felt as sharp and as swerving as an out of control car and I didn’t know how to sit, didn’t know how to properly wear the suit I’d stolen from my foster brother’s closet. “I am not interested in speaking to anyone about the matters of what I see.” Of course, I was. I was desperate for an opportunity. Desperate to be seen as something capable, worth while. The police would laugh at me but call from private numbers. My foster mother would frown but push my hair behind my ear and ask quietly if her husband was cheating on her with the man from next door.

“You misunderstand”, he had said, a picture of calm. “I’m trying to enlist your help. Your reputation precedes you, especially in that of the underworld.”

The presence of things outside of our normal realm was Tokyo’s, and the world’s, worst kept secret. Clubs were more often than not run by the elusive succubi who bounded between femininity and masculinity and could only allure, courtrooms were dominated by the scathing presence of an angel’s justice and it was likely your daily coffee had been made by someone who’d been perfecting their recipe for a millennia and a half.

(“I heard Madonna was Jesus reincarnated”, Ann once told me, shaking a sweetener packet into her tea. “And that some politician in Australia was hiding the fact that he was half goat for over 25 years.”

“Was he an Australian citizen?”, I had asked.

“I mean, I think so. Yeah.”

“Then at least he can continue in politics. Pass me a packet?”)

For now, I am a child parading in an adults suit.

“And your reputation precedes you, Masayoshi Shido.”

He blinked at me, smiled. Older men aren’t meant to smile at little young things like that. Little young things who still make sure their skirt isn’t riding up, who still carry the naïveté of adjusting a bra-strap in public—how easy it is to be the wanted thing and know why you don’t want to be it.

“ ** [redacted] ** , he said. “ ** [redacted] ** . What a pretty name for such a pretty girl.”

“It was my grandmother’s”, I told him.

“I see.” He pulled a file out from a bag I hadn’t noticed and set it in front of me. “I am starting a political party and plan to begin campaigning in the coming months. To have someone with your reputation aiding my party, I believe could benefit us both. Officially, your work would be classified under security.”

“What I do is deductive work”, I’d said, sliding the file back. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard about me, Masayoshi-san, but I’m not interested in being the new toy for a political party.”

He stared at me then. A cool stare I would later meet head-on with a mixture of both indifference and poorly-concealed anticipation. Anticipation of the worst kind: _are you going to hit me? Spit at me? Kill me?_

“Anything you want is yours if you take up my offer”, he eventually replies. “Money, better publicity—”, he tilts his head. “A reference from a well-respected psychiatrist to an even better endocrinologist. A plastic surgeon.” He slides the file back over to me. “Legal guardianship, for the necessary paperwork. All you need to do is look at what I give you, and tell me what you see. It’s that simple.”

It is, of course, never that simple. And yet... and yet names carry the weight of things. Names are bathroom-passes and names are rare opals in rural mines. A name, my name, held so much weight.

I would do anything to shake it off.

* * *

It is eight weeks since one of several operations and so very much longer since I signed a name I’m not sure I could recognise now on the dotted line Shido Masayoshi has pointed at when I finally just stand by the mirror and  _breathe_. Now read that again. Now read that one more time. Now compress your life into one run-on sentence and listen to how it makes sense to you. Now write it down.

These, these, these are _daydreams_ , I convince myself. People like me aren’t allowed these things. I think I can still see it sometimes; My invisible, billowing hair, my invisible painted toes crushed into tiny shoes, my invisible perky breasts cupped by something overstuffed and overused. This must be the transgender experience, being unable to do anything with yourself even when everything’s as cut, torn and tucked away as it can be. It still exists. Invisible to every eye, even my own, but it still exists. Phantom-pains of someone else’s life.

The first few nights without her, since that name on the dotted line hadn’t been spoken by any voice otherwise, I began to wake randomly. In my new kitchen, by my clean bathtub, under my 1000-count sheets, sweating, my heart pounding like I’d just run a marathon.

This is how Goro Akechi comes to life. This is how he wakes up.

It becomes a further test of patience to live with myself while I’m still in the stages of recreation. Imagine you, times two. Imagine that, except both versions of you are an asshole. Imagine that, except you don’t want either body, you just don’t want to exist anymore, but you’ll settle in something comfortable for the time being.

When my phalloplasty surgeon spreads my legs and says: _ “Looks good, champ. Decent size on you, too” _ I take it as a compliment, as permission to finally break.

I tear her Christmas cards. I burn her birthday messages. I make potpourri out of the compliments she’s received and I flush it all into sewage pipes because even the rust needs something to cling to.  _Dead to me._ The words are a stark contrast in my brain.  _Dead to me, dead to me._ What I tell myself is, I obviously don’t want her to die. I don’t want anyone, anything to die. I want life to be okay, and for things to be happy, and I want to eat figs on a autumn afternoon and I want to bake bread and get it right for once.

I call her voice mail:  _Sorry, I’m unable to get to the phone right now. If you leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as I can._

I call her again, and hang up.

I call her again, and I tell her how it felt to watch her die.

I hang up.

* * *

A sticky warmth stews in the gala hall. It’s not easy to pick the yakuza out from the crowd, which I suppose is somewhat of the point, but I still mull over the strange taboo of it all. There’s a woman with a snake coiled around her arm plucking a strawberry from her drink.

“Okumura-san”, Shido says, “may I introduce my associate, Akechi Goro.”

“Ah”, Okumura tilts his towards me, a curled smile, teeth glossy like the untouched champagne in his glass. No one drinks at events like these, but somehow the drinks are never wasted. _It’s a pretty façade_ , Shido had told me once, _we all know the important to staying sharp._ “A wonder to meet the famed detective. Your efforts have proved most beneficial to the company.” I offer my hand.

“A pleasure to meet you as well, Okumura-san.”

There’s enough westerners in the room tonight that he shouldn’t think twice about shaking my hand. Hell, there’s a man with seven arms dipping into the canapés right now. His fingers clasp around mine, thinner and maybe more brittle, but roughly male. His thumb skirts over my knuckle as we part—Shido smiles genially, gesturing out to the deepening crowd. 

“If you’ll excuse us, there are many people to see tonight.” Okumura waves an easy hand, ring flashing.

“Please, go ahead.”

I follow Shido as he weaves through the crowd: quick, cursive work. I mirror each step until we’re out of sight from the party, and he snaps a door shut behind us, producing a pen and small notebook from his breast pocket and passing it to me. The room we’re in is flooded with lamplight and awful red upholstery, bizarrely reminiscent of a slaughterhouse.

We don’t leave until I’ve finished writing.

* * *

People always think the world revolves around them—and why shouldn’t it? The guy serving me a Diet Coke and a cherry-rhubarb muffin is superbly angry at me for giving him crumpled cash and not because his girlfriend dumped him last night. Shido is glaring at me during our debrief in the morning because the information isn’t enough, isn’t acute enough, not because there was a failed assassination attempt against the CEO of some leading tech company he’s at wits end with. Everything’s always someone’s fault, and everything’s always everyone’s fault. This is just how the world works. It’s how the world continues.

Crossroads is a well-known drag bar in Shinjuku. Ultimate privacy, ultimate everything, it’s as small as a casual café on the outskirts of Shibuya’s station square. Lala leans over the counter and pinches my cheek. She stands six feet tall and even taller in her chosen heels today. Her yukata is a glossy black and gold and her makeup stretches out to the height of her eyebrows. She plucks her cigarette from her lips and blows the smoke away from me.

“You’re looking thin, baby”, she says. “That man been working you too hard?” I settle to sit at the stool in front of her, shrugging off my jacket and setting it on the back.

“Just not sleeping great. I’ve come for business.”

She pouts, taps ash into an abandoned glass beside her.

“You never come to see me anymore. I should be offended.” But she glances behind her and knocks her knuckles against the wood of the bar. “Rei-chan, bring me my deck if you please.”

From the curtain of beads separating the bar from the back rooms an attendant in a silken yukata slips out and sets Lala’s tarot cards in front of her, leaning on their elbows to nudge into the conversation.

“Can I watch?”, they ask. Their lips are glossy but don’t stick together. Their makeup is neater, cleaner, nails a gel black.

“ _No_ ”, Lala reprimands, smacking their arm. “Go check on Ohya.”

The attendant pouts and slinks off, Lala grabbing the cards and sorting through them with a rhythmic practice.

“Thinking?”, she asks me.

“Yes.”

She splays the cards in her hand and one by one places five out onto the bar, setting the rest of the deck aside and tapping her finger against the first card. 

“You remember how this goes? Situation, causes, changes, strengths, challenges, outcome.” Her finger moves as she talks, touching each red backing of the cards.

When you get your cards read, it’s the one time in your life the world securely revolves around your every action and your every room. You go back for that hit, and back for it again, and soon you’re addicted. Afflicted with the need to know-all and be-all.

“I remember”, I say.

“Good.” She flips over the first card at the top of the formation and begins. “Present situation. The Eight of Swords.” The card reveals a woman bound and blindfolded with eight swords surrounding her, trapping her in place. Water is pooled at her feet. “You’re trapped by your circumstances and feel there is no clear path out. Usually when the Eight of Swords shows up, it serves as a warning that your thoughts and beliefs are no longer serving you.” She taps the bottom of the card, the water. “You aren’t trusting your intuition, you’re limiting yourself. The more you think about your situation the more stuck you feel you become—but this is also a card of reassurance. There is a way out of your predicament, you have the resources you need, you just need a new perspective. It’s a very challenging card, an interesting beginning for a spread like this. You’re stuck in a, ah, what do you call it—“, she waves her cigarette around vaguely, “—a _victim’s_ mentality. You’ve surrendered your power, strength, etcetera, to the greater force. You feel like you don’t have choices but you do, you’re just afraid of challenging them, confused if it’s better to stay tied up or to take the risk and let your bindings loose. Make sense?”

She flips the card to the left.

“The King of Swords, reversed. The cause of your obstacles and challenges. This card can allude to a quiet power, a misuse of power... a significant authority who isn’t using their power, for anything good. Ego driven.” Her nail traces the sword in the King’s hand. “There’s someone in your life you must be weary of. He can only do harm and has only his personal interests in mind, and will do whatever it takes to achieve these interests even if it means you are the cost. He is stopping your self-development. He is not to be trusted.”

She flips the card to the right.

“High Priestess, the changes you need to make in order to face your challenges. Reversed as well, I see. This is a call to direct your attention inwards and listen to yourself. You might be swayed by others opinions but you need to focus on what’s right for you.” She takes a drag of her cigarette, smacking her lips together as the gloss sticks. “Again, your intuition. You’re really out of tune. Does it make you feel guilty to trust yourself? because denial doesn’t help anybody, and it won’t help you. Denial will only keep you from finding the answer within yourself. Try some meditation when you have the time, the High Priestess is the calm centre inside of you and is always there for you, should you choose to listen.” Lala looks up at me, layers of fake lashes crowding her eyelid space. “She is untouched from the external world. Pure. You can trust her guidance.”

She flips the card in the bottom left, avoiding the centre card.

“Your strengths. Reversed Page of Wands. Something’s brewing in you, I think. It’s shiny and new, maybe it scares you, and you don’t know how to turn it into an action—you don’t know how to manifest it. Don’t try to force it. Doing this might actually stunt it’s growth and by the look of your cards—“, she taps ash into her glass again, “—this has been brewing for some time, and it’s needed this time to come to fruition. This path you’ll eventually take will be intense. Private. It will be of your own choice and no others.”

She flips the card in the bottom right.

“Other challenges. The Tower reversed. Jesus, you’re killing me. You’re undergoing a lot of reconstruction in your personal life. See, usually the regular upright Tower means that external forces are creating change, but here it’s internal. You’re calling a lot of things into question with this card; your beliefs, values, purpose and so on. It’s all very existential. You can’t resist this change and like I said before, _no denial_. As much as you don’t want to, you’re going to have to go through the hardship in order to come through on the other side. The Tower is inevitable. Since you aren’t tuned into your intuition, the impact of these coming changes are going to suck. It’s going to be big and scary and you won’t be able to minimise the destruction ahead.” She pauses, purses her lips. “Unless, of course, you suddenly become so attuned with yourself that you surpass any need for something as trivial as tarot, but I don’t see that happening, baby.”

She flips the centre card.

“Your outcome.”

In the background of the card, a bridge crosses a large, flowing river and leads to a castle on the opposite side of the riverbank. 

“Five of Cups”, Lala says, “Reversed. You need to forgive yourself and move on. What happened is out of your control now and you did the best you could with that you had. The past is the past, it’s taught you it’s lessons, and you need to recognise the value of your experiences even if they are painful. It’s time to rediscover how to be open and take risks again, to talk to people, to create bonds. By sharing with others, you’ll lessen the emotional impact of your setback and you will be able to move on. No path is the wrong path”, she looks over at me, “There aren’t any right or wrong choices in life, it’s just always about managing the consequences. It’s about what we choose to do after the big decisions that count. There’s hope on the horizon if you want it there.”

“Is that your advice for me, then?”, I ask. My throat feels funny, closed and so very open at the same time. “Trust myself. Go with the flow. I can’t change anything so just let it all happen as it’s meant to go.” She points at me with a deep frown.

“You asked for the reading. Don’t get your panties in a twist just because what I said hit a little too close to home for you. And anyway, it’s your own fault. See this—?” She gestures to the reversed cards. “That’s all _your_ doing, baby. With this many reversed, it means you’re not paying attention to the life lessons being dealt out. No use whining about it if you’re not going to go on an epic spiritual journey.”

As she’s putting away the cards one falls out, landing upright. She gives me a jaded look, picks up the card and places it in front of me.

“Death”, Lala says, smoky and deep. “Let go.”

“Excuse me.” I slide out to the bathrooms.

Is there anything in life except the total inconstant rage of wanting a warm bath on a cold night? Of wanting attention, wanting creation and admiration right under the press of your forefinger as you click to the next channel on pay-per-view? I think, if I emulate who I want to be enough times in one lifetime, eventually, if I make it to the end, the person waiting for me there will be me. Me, or worst case scenario, Mary Shelley’s ghost who time travelled back from the future to say: _“_ _ See, see this is what I meant when I said I wanted to create a monster.” _

At least her monster had a face. I poke at whatever’s left of mine in the mirror sometimes and try to find the telltale signs of whoever was born that early morning in Okinawa, where a few rooms over another child would be born with whom I’d eventually have some sort of friendship with as we coincidentally ended up at the same orphanage. I tried to be like him, too. It didn’t help that he was a full nine inches shorter than me.

The bathroom door swings open and the attendant—Rei-chan— walks in, rummaging through their purse and setting it on the sink.

“Stop me if I’m being nosy”, they say, and pull out a tube of lipgloss. “But sounds to me that you’ve gotta stop trying to fix things.” Pout. Pucker. Cap. Slide. “Just stop.” Rub. Smack. Touch-up. Cap. “You can’t fix things because you can’t change the past. No one can. You have to start making a future you can stomach, a future where you’re happy. Stop raising your standards, too. Shit’s unhealthy. Doesn’t matter if you’re talented at what you do, doesn’t matter if you care about it, if you’re waiting for everything to go wrong then it just doesn’t matter. Like love, for example. We all talk about love, and finding love, and what it feels like to love, but love’s not that. It’s not the frantic cause everyone makes it out to be.” They take a swig of their 24-hour energy, lipgloss coating the metal. “That’s not what love is”, they repeat. “Sure, love sucks, but love isn’t that. You just gotta go with it. Take the hits as they come.”

“You were eavesdropping”, I accuse, and they grin.

“‘Course. How else am I gonna learn?”

“It’s an invasion of privacy.”

“They’re just cards, honey. You’re the one that makes them real. Issue with readings, I guess. Especially when you’re asking a question about the future. Now you know too much, now you believe it, are you gonna prevent it or ride it out?”

I watch them readjust their wig in the mirror, smoothing out the long black locks and tucking a half braid behind each ear.

“I never got your name”, I say. They grin at me, swing their bag over their shoulder.

“Sure you did. You got  _a_ name. You’re not getting another one—defeats the purpose of an anonymous club, don’t you think? _Power in a name_ , or whatever. Especially around these parts.” They pick up their drink and send a little wave over their shoulder. “Good luck with your mystic journey. I hear the cab-fare for these things is astronomical.”

* * *

“Did you hear?”, my landlady, a five-foot woman who mightn’t be 900 years older than me says.

“Hear what?” She passes me a coat hanger and I slip my shirt onto it, the dryers around us tumbling and rolling. Someone’s put a pair of sunglasses into one of the washing machines.

“That Big Bang Burger owner was killed in a car crash”, she nods repeatedly, wrapping my tie around her own neck to fold it quickly into a simple knot. “Apparently it was awful brutal, his eyes popped out and everything.” I take the tie from her and slip it over the coat hanger hook.

“That’s a shame. He had a daughter, didn’t he?”

“Uh-huh. Wife’s dead, too. Died years ago. His little girl’s all alone now.”

* * *

“I’m sending you a file tonight”, Shido’s voice is crackly through the speaker. “It’s your new priority.”

* * *

This is the day I meet Ren Amamyia for the second time and do not know it.

Naked as the day he was born and wholly unbothered by it, the model controls his body without regard or shame, only the desire to push forward when he is incapable of pushing, and with acomplete and utter power in his gut driving fear and other things away. It’s what stopped him from killing himself last Sunday night. He does not disturb even a passerby’s dream with his fleeting presence in their life, and yet through hundreds of bodies he would always be completely remarkable. He has not survived any fight he was in. He is a pretty model, for all words are worth. It’s a heavy first impression as first impressions go.

It’s his fault for touching my wrist, I can’t help but look in. I let go of his hand, tugging at my gloves.

“Hi”, the model greeted. “Sorry, I’m Yusuke’s study. I can cover up, if you want.”

“You’re fine.” I stare hard at his face. “Is Kitagawa-kun here?”

“He’ll just be a minute.” The man tilts his head, the light framing his face nicely. “Do I know you?”

“No.”

He got so drunk last Thursday night that his roommate had to fireman-carry him to bed.

The door slides open and Yusuke walks in, thoroughly invested in examining a selection of brushes in his hands. He barely acknowledges either of us and sits in front of the canvas, readying to paint. I close my eyes, take a breath and face him.

“Kitagawa-kun.”

Nothing.

“Yusuke.”

“Try poking him”, the model suggests. I set my hand on Yusuke’s shoulder.

“Yusuke.” Yusuke looks up and blinks innocently.

“Oh, Goro, I forgot you were coming. Were you offered refreshments?”

“I’m fine”, I says before the model can undoubtedly slide in a comment or two. “If you could spare just a few minutes, I’d like to speak to you about your email.”

“Oh, of course.”

“In private.”

“Don’t mind me”, the model waves a casual hand, bare thighs now crossed over one another and chin leaning in his palm. “I’m here for the next six hours anyway.”

Yusuke looks between us for a moment before standing, setting his brushes down and pulling away from his chair.

“We won’t be long”, he tells the model.

“Thank you”, I tell him.

“Woe is me”, the model tells the room.

“You’re looking dark today”, Yusuke frowns at me in the hallway, leaning against a particularly paint-splattered wall. “If I might say, your aura is very...”, he strokes his chin, “magenta.”

“I’m not a fan of the colour.”

“That’s your problem, not mine. I met a woman at the station the other day who was the most lovely shade of turquoise—it was as if the sea followed her every step.”

“The email, Yusuke?”

Yusuke’s eyes remain trained around me, moving slowly in some kind of surveillance. “Sensei spoke to the man for ten minutes before ending the call. It seems without the profit from the counterfeits things are going downhill for those who were at benefit—which until then I had assumed only to be sensei, however it seems that hasn’t been the case.”

“Any specifics?”

“Someone with ties in the government, an informant in Shibuya—they were very sparse with details, I apologise.” I shake my head.

“It’s not your fault. I’m thankful you told me—I’ll forward the information to the police. Thank you for even remembering.” Yusuke shrugs once.

“You are my friend. I take care to remember what my friends speak about. Anyway, while sensei is still under investigation it seems he won’t be taking any actions in this other man’s plans. Am I correct in assuming that?”

“It’s wise of him”, I reason. “Yes, probably. However don’t let your guard down.”

“Have some faith.”

“I do”, I glance at the door to the studio. “I shouldn’t keep you and your friend waiting. I have a meeting soon, too.”

“He isn’t usually so chatty”, Yusuke comments, “I wonder why he chose to be so with you.”

“It’s not every day a stranger comes face to face with you in the nude, I suppose.”

“I’ve only met him a handful of times. Until next time, Goro.”

He bows shortly at me and opens the door. I watch it slide shut and rest against the wall Yusuke had. The case of the counterfeits is an ongoing investigation, highly secretive and incredibly high-profile, the police have barely made a statement on the crimes of famed artist Madarame and his Yakuza connections.

“No, I heard”, a passerby says into his phone, readjusting his shoulder bag as he walks. “Fifteen minutes, tops. I just made sure Yusuke had something to eat.” He catches my eye as he rounds the corner and stops, lingering to exit as he pulls his phone away from his ear. “Are you lost? I get lost, too. This art block is fucking horrific. I’ve been circling the same nine rooms for fifteen minutes.”

“...I’m not lost.”

The passerby smiles, says “That’s good, then” , and walks away, continuing to chatter into his phone.

This is Ren Amamyia.

* * *

Once in every so while (too often, arguably not enough) I visit a small recreational hall in Kichijōji. I listen on the outskirts a weekly support group I saw a lousy poster for months ago. The door is flimsy, but at least it hides me. The walls are painted a dull grey, sectioned off with mauve lines. It’s immediately depressing.

I’m not sure why I come. Maybe I just want to listen. Want to know my life isn’t as bad as theirs, that my life isn’t that bad at all.

“I don’t know”, a girl is saying softly. “Lately it just feels like he was the only one who ever wanted me like that. Like he’s the only one who ever will.”

“I get that”, another girl starts nervously. “Like no ones ever gonna love you like they did.”

“Yeah. Or that we were just made to be something for them. Like we’re no better than them.”

“I’m a victim of a love potion”, a young voice speaks up. “It was probably... God, it must have been 8 months she had me on it. Sometimes I wonder if I should have just kept taking it like she wanted me to, if I should have just pretended I didn’t find out. At least then I would still have something to love—someone to love me.”

“The thing is”, a different voice says, “the thing we have to remind ourselves is that what they felt for us wasn’t love. It had nothing to do with who we were. It was about power. It was about the gratification they received in—“

* * *

Makoto Niijima met me when I was 16 years old and dangerously underweight. Back then, our paths were crossed but only to the bare minimum of necessity. I wanted to assume we had an unspoken, mutual understanding, but I’d made that mistake before. 

(“I don’t hate”, Yusuke had said, wetting his hands in a small bowl before returning to the lump of clay before him. “It’s my conscious decision not to. I choose to believe sensei cared about me before his own lust for money existed, and I choose to believe he will care about me after.”)

Now, at least, I can call her a friend. A rival of sorts.

“You’re late”, Makoto tells me, turning without waiting for a response. “There’s only so long I can stop everyone from coming in and finishing up.”

“I appreciate you calling me. What’s the situation?”

“It’s as same as the others, really.” The elevator we take up to the apartment is walled with smudged mirrors but otherwise clean. “I didn’t want to ask our usual empath because of how badly she reacted the last time.” Makoto spares me a side glance. “It’s especially brutal. The body has already been moved but I’ll take you to see it later, if you like.”

The elevator lurches to a stop and she leads us out, following the lines of yellow tape along the walls.

“We’ll see”, is all I say.

The smell was so bad that it stuck. Around the room, things were catalogued with coloured tags. A framed photo of two identical girls and a shorter, older woman. A broken lamp. Arterial blood spray.

“Her sister?”, I ask. Makoto shakes her head, folding her arms and leaning in the doorway.

“Died eight years ago, homicide. Mother died of a heart attack a year prior.”

“Who killed the sister?”

“It’s a cold case. Nothing like what happened here, though. Detectives at the time classed it as a break-in gone wrong”, Makoto frowns, then. “A knife was stabbed through her eye. Some kind of break-in.”

“Paid-off?”

“Maybe. This was before the Watari-corruption scandal.”

“I see”, my gaze trails down to the carpet. It’s Turkish looking, deep reds and blues saturated like lapis lazuli and garnet. I kneel down and peel off my glove, tucking it into my pocket. Barely noticeable, a small tooth blends in with the white accent boarder of the carpet. It’s sharp but short, too wide to be a canine.

I pick it up. It pulls me down.

I walk into a sweltering gloom.

It feels like suddenly being made of lead, feet too heavy to lift, your only choice being to drag, but it doesn’t eradicate the delicacy of the situation. My body is held up by strings, here, the wires somehow not tangling above me as they stretch endlessly through the roof, move through it like it’s nothing but warm butter.

I trail through a facade of Tokyo’s underground, footsteps resounding through the silence. Everything aims to distract here, to construe distrust with faux-empathy in every left turn and ceiling beam. I’ve been in places like this before, mass distortions of the world that other serial killers leave behind—but it’s never been so vivid. For the others, it’s a haze. It’s as if they could be caught at any minute, and they can’t waste a single second.

I stop abruptly as my foot splashes a puddle of red, and suddenly, like a trigger for the anonymous, clouded red water floods the underground in one luxurious gush and I am barely even budged as the liquid settles at knee-height. It laps at the walls, soaks my slacks. The eerie silence settles again except now, I have the comfort of treading water.

This is when I see her.

She has a stronger body, here. Broad shoulders and muscled thighs hidden beneath an ornate dress—high to her neck, tight against her wrists and brushing the soles of her feet: toes painted a soft, quiet pink. Pearl buttons shine down the bodice of the dress and bring attention to the lace arms, the tightened waist of a thick corset made from intricate embroidery. Her hands are veined, body drained. This woman, stark white in all ways except the dark frame of her hair, sat starkly straight, her ankles just touching the stools legs, toes barely brushing the water, and her spine—exposed and a harsh, a clean white that strung her posture straight. A string keeps her head, her whole body up. I think fleetingly of charts, of posters, of information brochures at clinics. I think of biology and horror books and the hidden strength that the human body hides. I feel my stomach curl uncomfortably. Her and I, I think, her and I have similar chins. There’s a glossiness to her hair I recognise. A thrum in what’s left of her life that resonates with mine.

Her body crumples into the water, almost comedically timed in reflection of a butterflies life, for connected to her spine were two large wings—bright, lovely and light, perhaps representing change and hope and light. Plucked and no longer able to be kept, she was stained pink now, completely warped under the ripple of the water.

I held the tooth out blindly, backwards. Fingertips take it from mine and I’m back in the woman’s apartment, blinking redness away from my eyes and waiting for the scent of decay to settle back in. It’s all a little like taking off your sunglasses on a bright day—suddenly the sepia is gone.

“It’s not hers”, I hear myself say. There’s the rustle of an evidence bag and I struggle to pull my glove back on as I stand. “I could see the way he viewed her, the way he viewed Tokyo. Everything was distorted.” I trail over to the apartment window, from here she would have been able to see Tokyo Tower. Her rent must be hellish. “It’s the only word I can use to explain it. He saw her as strong—but biologically. Genetically. Outwardly she was weak, nothing more than something he could pluck away and kill. With a touch”, I add. “He could touch her once and have it be enough. Once is enough.”

“Then why the mutilation? Why bother to let her fight back?”

The answer arrives on my tongue as soon as she raises the questions.

“Because he can.”  
  


* * *

There’s an art to sitting still and not existing until you’re asked to be.

The clicking of typewriters, laptops, heels and nails fill the highest office of the Diet building.

_ Slump your back. Let the saliva gather in your mouth. _

There’s a fragrance to delegates, a telltale red smear that follows in the wake of a contractor, and lawyers may as well have a halo on their head and a pitchfork in hand.

_ Let your jaw slacken, drop from its usual bite. If your fingers twitch, take it as a sign that life is leaving. _

The silence bores into the hall with all of the shouldering brunt of a pushy executive. The clock ticks. A door opens and shuts. Heels trail next to me and a bow is offered.

“Mr. Masayoshi is ready for you.”

_ Defibrillate. _

“Thank you.”

She nods and bustles off. I take a moment to gather myself, expand my lungs and swallow the wetness in my mouth. I stand, brush my sleeves and my slacks, and enter his office.

Shido greets me with a raised cup.

“Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

_Remind yourself to breathe when you are being spoken to. This is how you hide in plain sight. This is how to forget you’re dead, dying, gone._

“Sit.” I take the chair closest to the front of his desk, it compresses under my weight: evidence of life. “The police commissioner made me aware of your current interest.”

“I was in the area”, I lie. It was a stretch, asking Makoto to keep my name out of everything. Too many people saw me, too many mouths to keep closed. “I thought I might lend my theories.”

“Your expertise”, he corrects, steam rushing upwards as he he pours a cup of tea. I shake my head.

“They’re only theories based on a biased perspective.”

“You’re the best, so these theories must be handled seriously. Accusations must be documented. It’s serious enough that so many have been killed in such a short amount of time—all communities are looking to me for an answer I do not have.” He looks up at me over his drink, leaning to sit on the edge of his desk just a step away from me. “You understand, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“So walk me through your findings. Is the assailant human, or other?”

_ Press play on your audio to remind them you have a voice, but make sure it’s the prerecorded kind. _

“The mutilation on the bodies could suggest either, but there’s an unignorable emptiness to each of the crime scenes. As if life itself has been sucked dry from the space.” I pause. Rewind. “It’s unnatural, to say the least. I wasn’t able to get a read on anything other than what I could physically see. Detective Niijima believes it’s connected to a series of other homicides that date back many years.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think it’s possible”, I say carefully. “This certainly wasn’t a first kill.”

“And few can create such an impact. Have you considered blood magic?”

“Blood magic has a completely different read”, I emphasise. “This kill was completely blank. Like whatever presence of existence was there has been ripped out—save the tooth left behind. But that means nothing without the right eyes.”

“Your eyes”, Shido prompts. “What did you see?”

I ruminate over the vision in my mind. Cloudy red water and eloquence, regale.

“Nothing substantial to the investigation”, I decide. “At most, a light profile for the police to work with.”

“And what would you suggest I tell the public should the police decide to title this happening as an active serial killer?”

“Show empathy to all communities. Let them believe you’re as actively involved in finding this killer as any detective might be. And that anyone who only has maternal figures in their lives should be weary and more contiencious about their safety, at the very least.” He sets his tea down and braces his hands on the desk, legs crossed out in front of him.

“You’re aware that’s a very broad statement for a very complex issue.”

“I’m aware, sir.”

He watches me for a long moment. “I’ll allow you to work alongside Niijima should she need your services longer. So long as you don’t lose sight of your main priority.” He leans away and rounds the desk, dragging his hand on the wood. “One more thing.”

_ Don’t move. Don’t ever move until you’re explicitly told. _

“Yes, sir?”

Shido looks at me through the tint of his glasses, face relaxed, casual and light. That sunset orange.

“Do be safe. And remember the attire for tonight.”

* * *

The reception is a gaudy, daring affair. Completely innapropriate in the wake of Okumura’s death, surely, but everyone seems to diligently ignore the fact.

Shido wouldn’t get his hands dirty, I think. But I wouldn’t put it past him to hire the Shibuyan yakuza—ties he hasn’t kept that much of a secret. And sure, Okumura toiled in illegality. I’d done some work for him on Shido’s behest, finding out stockbrokers and other CEOs secrets. But every time I tried to find a connection between Shido and Okumura, I drew a blank. Something wasn’t right. Perhaps his death was just another one of those things.

“Akechi-kun?”

I could feel the tape in my head rewind. I turned, facing a short woman who had, at some point, come straight up to me.

“Sorry, I’m not sure we’ve met”, she smiles brightly. “Haru Okumura. I’m here on behalf of Okumura Foods.”

I know her. Through Okumura’s eyes I’ve watched her grow and grow more into her mother, somehow inheriting the soft strawberry blonde hair that was curled around her shoulders now.

“Ah”, I bow. “Okumura-san. My condolences—”

“They’re unnecessary but thank you for the sentiment. May I ask who you’re here on the behalf of?”

“I was invited independently.” I answer. “I wasn’t aware Okumura Foods would be attending.”

“Ties with Mr. Masayoshi’s party came to my awareness after the event of my fathers passing. I decided to find out it’s depth.” Her smile is gentle but there’s a sternness to her high collar. A sweetness where she hides fury. She’s wearing gloves. “You seem to be well acquainted with the situation, however...”

“Yes?”

“Excuse me for saying, but you seem quite troubled.” My grip on my champagne glass changes.

“What?”

“I’m sorry”, and she smiles again, sweet as sugar, “it’s just the impression I got.”

“Ah, Miss. Okumura”, Shido greets, joining us. He bows lowly, she squints at him but does not return the favour. “The party is glad you could make it. My condolences to your father, he was a very great man whose friendship I treasured dearly.”

“I can’t say he spoke of you as kindly, Mr. Masayoshi”, she says with a sharp guidance, “but I appreciate the sympathy. My bodyguard and the Vice President of Okumura Foods will be accompanying me for our meeting, if that is no trouble.”

“Of course not.” I know in the way Shido’s jaw tightens that it is, in fact, trouble. “Please, follow me”—but he pauses and looks at me.

“Akechi”, he says, “be mindful of your deadline.”

The look Haru gives me is nothing short of skepticism, but I have bigger things to think about. Tonight, amongst the Yakuza and the politicians and the fae serving truffle and roe, there are former scientists, former associates.

I take off my gloves and tuck them in my breast pocket.

* * *

“I’m so tired.” Predictably, my apartment does not answer. I’m so tired in ways I can no longer explain. My feet don’t drag but my brain does. To get to sleep, I have to do too many things. 8:30, brush my teeth. 9:00 PM, get in bed. Roll onto my left, roll onto my right, roll onto my left again before deciding to sleep on my right. If I have time, I touch myself, a quick run down to see if I’m in the mood for anything.

I’m never in the mood for anything. 

I roll on my side, tug the sheets up to my chin. Maybe it’s the testosterone making me restless, maybe things aren’t as bad as I’m making them out to be. I close my eyes. I dream. In my dreams I am reaching out from behind a vast, indigo sky. I am controlling the tides, I am making deals with headstrong mortals, I am drinking the ocean and the light of suns that are light years away and the atmosphere tastes of a light chamomile foam. I am watching a monster watch me—he’s always there, always waiting. I’m not sure what he’s waiting for.

_No_ ,  my dreams tell me.  _Things really are as bad as they seem._

* * *

**ISSHIKI** last known whereabouts **396 AMINA PL.**

Social services interjection—approx 12 yrs

**YONGEN-JAYA** , known associates.

* * *

Haru Okumura works fast.

“How could you tell?”, I ask her. Her house is an overbearing affair, tables upon tables covered in funeral flowers and memoriam cards. It felt like somewhat of a test, walking past it all as she lead me inside. The pollen alone was aggravating.

“Your reputation in the underworld”, she replies, measuring out tea, “and Makoto is a friend of mine. I also saw you shaking a lot of hands the other night.”

“I can’t say I’ve met another empath, at least so overtly. I’m not sure I even fit into the category.”

“You do. Have you anything to ask? If you haven’t been in contact with another for so long, I mean”, she smiles soft, bringing a tray into the lounge. “I’ve mentored a few empaths.”

The tip of a branch rattled across the window pane. I listened to the desperate, eerie noise it produced.

I thought back to similar nights, waiting for morning to come, hearing things move outside in the dark while a nightmare threatened to manifest—frozen in bed, afraid of things that would never come.

“Does your empathy ever translate into nightmares? Dreams?”

“Yes”, Haru answers simply, taking a seat in the chair furthest from me. “I’d say that it’s the greatest symptom of empathy. Over-investment. I was lucky have met some people early in my life who taught me to build walls, however.”

“That’s really possible?”

She tilts her head, tea cup gentle in her lap. “I’m surprised you’re not familiar with the task. As I understand it, you have a reputation for being quite collected. I assumed we were similar in...”

“Style?”, I suggest. She shrugs.

“When I was very young, I would have nightmares of my mother’s death from my fathers perspective. I couldn’t understand it, until I realised the scope of my empathy.” She gestures to her attire. “It started with physical barriers. Literal, but also to trick the mind into receiving them as mental barriers also.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“My gloves are quite thin. They have holes, they’re made of lace”, she explains, “I like the fashion, however they wouldn’t stop any skin-to-skin contact, which I’m sure you know is a primary door to empathy.” It’s more about believing that I’ve shielded myself enough in a physical aspect that it translates to my metaphysical belief.” She tilts her head. “If I shook your hand, I would only be shaking it. I am protected. A wall has been erected.” She takes a sip of her tea and sets it on the low table between us. “You wear such thick gloves and winter attire so I assumed we shared that small trick. It seems I’m wrong. You genuinely need a barrier.”

“I’m not empathetic”, I reiterate, “not in the way you are, I suppose. I have to work to keep things out.” She frowns.

“So what are you?”

A good question, if I’ve ever heard one. “I did work for your father occasionally”, I say, “per the request of my own boss. I’m a private detective, I find people and I find things out about them.”

“You started young with such little credibility, you can’t have had serious credentials.”

“That came with time, but no. I didn’t have any credentials or license in the beginning.” I pause, none of this is what I’m used to discussing. Haru’s the only other empath I’ve met close to me. We’re certainly not the only two in Tokyo, let alone this suburb, but our lines have crossed, interwoven uncomfortably. “By touching something, I’m able to see a timeline of sorts. Everything about this thing, or this person, from beginning to present.”

Haru absorbs this, sitting back slightly in her seat.

“How do you turn it off?”, she eventually asks, not unexpected. 

“With a lot of strain”, I smile tersely. “Usually with the simple things—my bed, my clothes, this couch—it’s easy to brush off. I’m not looking for anything, so why is there a need to look? They’re inanimate necessities. All I would find out is the factory they were made in, the salesman that sold it.”

“So no walls”, Haru realises, “negligence.” My eye twitches.

“I suppose, for lack of a better word. Our gifts are phenomena that can’t be explained.”

My voice sours around the word gift and I’m sure she can hear it if the tilt of her head is to go by anything.

“You’ve met my father”, she says after a beat, “done work for him.”

“Yes.”

Her legs uncross slowly, her knees close together. 

“I dare say you must know more about me than I do you.”

“Yes.”

“So why are you here, Akechi-kun?”

“You invited me. Why am I here?”

Our tense silence is interrupted by a bright egg-timer sound. She stands smoothly and gestures for me to follow. Her kitchen is white and spacious, a light grey, almost purple tile frames the backsplash. I linger in the doorway as she opens the oven, sliding on a pink mitt and pulling out a sweet smelling cake.

“I dream of this thing sometimes”, I tell her, watching the empty space, the faint shimmer of the moon and the faraway presence of moonlight through the kitchen window. “It wants me to think it’s human. It wants me to trust what it’s wearing and not underneath. Surface imagery.” Haru continues pull out a glass display dish and a clean glass bowl.

“What’s underneath?”, she asks.

“Dog teeth”, I answer. “I can see them under its lip—sharp teeth, rotting from the inside... sometimes I think I see it even when I’m awake. I try to keep my mouth shut because I’m afraid he’ll climb in.”

“Is he here now?”

I blinks, looking away from the floor and at Haru, a bland frown on her face. 

“It”, I say. “Not he.”

“You’re afraid of it”, Haru then counters, leaning against the island. I worry she stares right through me, that her empathy—as touch oriented as mine is—has somehow expanded beyond to telepathic procedure. Impression, I remember her saying when we met. I look away.

“It’s most probably a manifestation of my own past. I was afraid of dogs growing up. My foster father thought it was ridiculous so he found a stray and locked it in the hallway closet with me. He didn’t let me out until he got home from work.”

“And?” I shake my head.

“And nothing. It was just one of those things—being scared of the dark, not knowing how to tie your shoes, afraid of every sound a stray twig will make against your bedroom window... I wish I had the confidence of knowing what I’m seeing isn’t real, but I don’t. You claim it a gift but I can’t help but think it’s only doomed me”, I rub my face roughly. “I want to run away some days.” It sounds lame coming from my mouth. Such a reverent thought that I’ve fought with in my mind, with such a heightened sense of anxiety and terror, suddenly reduced to a flat line.

“Running won’t solve anything”, Haru says predictably. “You’ll only become more fixated on the cause of your distress.” 

“Maybe.” Haru turns to the pantry. I let her enlist my help to pour confectioner’s sugar in a bowl as she whisked it with some lemon juice and lavender extract that she had labeled and sitting on the counter. My help was innate; standing by her side and dropping in spoonful after spoonful, following her nods to a childhood recipe I was not allowed to know. I thought about memories with my own mother, with my foster mother, snippets of cooking lessons learned from observation now made redundant with how little I cooked or baked.

“Perfect”, Haru says, and lifts the small whisk, the pale icing drizzling from its end. “Did you kill my father, Goro Akechi?”

I blanch, pull back from her, sweat beading on my skin and scaring me senseless.

“No, no—”

“Then why do you feel so guilty?”, she prods, facing me, waving a hand, her rings flashing. “It’s palpable even now. I am always there for a friend in need but we are not friends, Akechi-kun. We are strangers with a common trait and here you are, in my kitchen, divulging to me information I believe you’ve most likely never told anyone.” She squints. “What has scared you so?”

“I don’t..”, I lick my lips, swallow dry. “I don’t know.I need you to know that I don’t know how your father died. Not truly.”

“You suspect your gift may have had a hand in it.” She squints. “The work you do for Masayoshi-san, the people you find...”, Haru trails off, shakes her head. “Going back to your prior issue, if you’d like I could teach you a few things about raising barriers, distancing yourself from what you learn so you might get a better nights sleep.” She looks at me then. “You look dreadfully tired.”

“That boarders too close on the line of friendship, don’t you think?”

“I never said I didn’t want to be your friend. In fact, I think we could be great friends. Being your confidant is another story.” She nudges me. “Let’s go finish our tea and you can tell me more of this dream you keep having.”

* * *

Yongen-Jaya was a sleepy district. A great place for a quiet getaway, with fun to be had at the local battling cages and the promise of relaxation at the communal bathhouse (if you knew where to look). An indescribable force remained studiously present in this suburb while the world aroundskewed into vast colours that seemed to only stretch for miles on end—the clouds that always seemed too close for comfort and the sun always felt like it was watching. Tokyo’s cityscape yawned endlessly around it, impossibly stretched and swallowing each commuter.

Leblanc was a well-kept secret.

The barista squints at me as I walk in, a huff to his cheeks as he grabs a new mug from an antique-looking shelf.

“Don’t suppose you’re one of those decaf nuts.”

There’s a television in the corner, playing out some regular talk-show. “No”, I say.

“Good”, then clicks his tongue. “No, that’s not it”, he murmurs, half of a conversation. “I’ve seen you on TV, haven’t I? Must have.”

“I’ve been on a few times.”

“Your first time here in Yongen? Don’t see types like you here, no offence.”

“Your cafés reputation spoke for itself.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere in a place like this.” He sets a cup down and I take it immediately. “That’s the Jamaica Blue. Smooth flavour, huh?”

I taste it, pleasantly surprised.

“I usually only drink black instant.”

“Then you’re on your way to a slow death”, he runs his fingers along his jaw, gesturing needlessly. “Gotta have art to everything you do or else it’s just pointless.”

“I didn’t catch your name—“, I offer my hand and he waves it off.

“Just call me Boss, all the kids do. Yours?”

“Akechi.”

“Akechi, that’s right.”

Leblanc, I taste the word. Let my gaze travel along to the painting in the corner. He notices and lets out a pleased noise.

“Nice, isn’t it?”, he says. “Want to hear the story behind it? I know bits and pieces.”

I could go over and touch it and tell him it’s whole life story, from the creation of the canvas to each chemical in the paints. I think about the file in my attaché case— _Sakura, Isshiki and Isshiki._ Perhaps now, _Sakura, Sakura and Isshiki._ And I think— _so this is what Yusuke did with it._

I lean my chin in my hand. There is a chessboard in the corner, dusted and old but familiar in brand. I focus back on Sojiro Sakura, on the Sayuri.

“Alright.”

* * *

I am 15 and lanky and small in the large chair by the window

“You’ll be living here for the time being until we can sort something out.” Shido says from across the room. His drink continues to leave a wet ring on the table. “Your tutalage will be taken care of, anything you need will be paid for, as per our agreement.” He returns holding a rectangular, wooden box. “All you need to do is work hard, hm?”

He sits, brushes his suit jacket out, opens the case and pulls out a chess board.

“Chess”, he begins, “is all about the work you put in. It is about capturing your opponent off guard, all the while maintaining your own security.” He lays the pieces with a practised ease. “You have to shape and manipulate the game to your goal. It is about timing. You do not deliver the final blow until you’ve successfully drawn your opponents attention elsewhere. My father taught me chess when I was your age...”, the sun floating in touches his glasses, paints a reflection on the table. “Now I am going to teach you. This—”, he holds up a tall piece—“is your King. You cannot let it out of your sight.” He sets it it down with the rest of the white pieces by his elbow. “Your opponent will show no mercy. Why don’t you lay out your side of the board?”

I think back now at how children don’t understand stop signs. They don’t understand red flags or no-through roads. They don’t understand going 60 in a 60 zone.

I have to reach out across the table to take my chess pieces. One by one by one, until he picks up the final piece and offers it to me. Just out of reach.

It is my king.

I take it, set it down.

“Good”, Shido says. “Let’s begin.”  
  


* * *

What it feels like to be ripped open inside: an easily ignored discomfort in your stomach, followed by pinching just a little lower, the pinching increases, the pinching feels like someone’s shoved their whole hand into you and has gone around with nail clippers, it’s like dragging, it’s like balloons being filled up, it feels so low it should be out of your body but somehow it stays, because you haven’t been ripped open yet. _Patience_. It moves, higher but levelling out, towards your back. This is where it stays for the longest time, waiting for you to get used to the pain as you listen to nothing because somehow you’ve obtained a headache along the way and— _then, then,_ that’s when you’re ripped open.

I am struggling to button my shirt.

“You went to the café.” He is a blur in my periphery, a master of the Windsor knot. He faces me: “Then what? Did you see him?”

“Yes.” My fingers don’t work. “He was more talkative than reports suggested, but declined to shake my hand.” Slip, slip. Catch. Slip. Catch. Slip, slip, slip. Catch. Tuck.

“Any luck with the child?”

Smooth. Fold. “Elusive, for the moment. I’m currently awaiting information on her private adoption to the Sakura residence. If she’s living with him, then it’s only a matter of knocking on his front door and waiting for an answer.”

“Good”, he says. “Good. That’s good.”

His hand is a steady, invisible weight on the back of my neck. Constant pressure, constant presence. He sidles over to the desk and makes it real. He brushes my hair over my shoulder.

“ **[redacted]** ” , he says. “Do you know what your name means?”

Because when he touches me—when this man touches me, stains every fold, squeezes every capillary, when he reaches inside of me and pulls—

“Yes.”

—there’s nothing.

Just nothing.

I let him stroke my hair again. Again. I close my eyes. He brings both of his hands and runs them over my shoulders and down my arms, squeezing my wrists.

“ **[redacted]** ” , he says again. “How envious I am of your eyes, have I told you?”

“Thank you.”

“They are beautiful eyes.” He tilts his head, squeezes again. Bare skin against bare skin. “Tell me what you see.”

I stare at us in the reflection of the window. I see his glasses, I see my jacket, I see his watch and the gems of his cuff-links: a dark, impervious green. My gloves crinkling my breast pocket.

“Nothing”, I echo. He squeezes my wrists once more and lets go.

“Good.”

It took 16 minutes. A lot of things can happen in 16 minutes. I can shower, blow-dry my hair, get dressed and moisturise and still have 3 minutes to brush my teeth.

Walking home, I can’t shake off the heavy weight in my legs that reminds me how alive I really am. Sore ankle, sore sole, sore calf, sore muscle. Is there any real point in feeling anything at all anymore? The thought alone is a warning sign—don’t cross any further, for you’ll forget what it means to stub your toe on a sharp corner.

I cough against my scarf on the train, my hands shaking, trembling under the weight of a raw throat.

_Cross, cross, cross_ , my mind tells me, _and don’t look back._

I walk in late to the meeting. I don’t mean to walk through the doors but I do. I do. It feels like Shido Masayoshi is sliding around inside of me still like some kind of poisonous drill sergeant—all eight of the girls look up at once. Two younger boys sitting side by side blink at me quizzically. And then a man. He, I think many times, will think many times, he is dangerously inconspicuous. So inconspicuous, in fact, that his sparse file is so immediately suspicious.

“Hi”, Ren Amamyia says warmly. “Please, pull up a chair and sit down.”

Before I can even make the decision to run, the circle accomodates for my presence and shifts to make a space between a blonde girl and one with bows in her hair. I squeeze my fingers tight into my palms and take a chair from the far wall, sitting it a little further back from the circle. Ren seems pleased, however, and waves at a girl with dark hair and scales on her hands to continue speaking. She’s pursing her lips.

“I mean, I don’t even think I understand what makes a relationship a healthy one. I always feel like I have to do something to prove I’m worthy of my boyfriend’s or even my friend’s time.” Her fingers flutter nervously towards her hair. “I tried going down on him for the, like, third time that night and he pushed me away and asked if I was okay, but it’s not like I could tell him. I just want the people I love to feel good because—because then I feel good. I guess. I don’t know.”

“I’m Ren, I run the group”, Ren tells me after as everyone loiters and chatters around the buffet table. I’m so aware of how close we stand, how shaky I am, it’s terrifying. “I was wondering when you’d come join us.”

“You knew I was out there?”

“Call it a hunch that someone was watching”, Ren tilts his head. “Don’t worry, we get a lot of those. They come and go. Sorry, have we met before?”

“We haven’t met”, I insist.

He holds out his hand. His wrists were very thin, I remember thinking.

“Amamyia Ren”, he introduces again, shaking my gloved hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Akechi Goro”, I reply and his eyes change, he smiles a little wider, doesn’t let go.

“Oh, Yusuke’s friend, right? You visited him the other day.”

“Right”, I blink. “Yes, we ran into each other in the hallway.” He nods and finally lets go of my hand, sending a sweet sort of smile my way as he turns to the coffee filter.

“Sorry I didn’t remember, I’m usually good about these things.”

“It’s fine”, I clench my hands around themselves. “It can be hard to place a name to a face.”

”Heard you got an eyeful, though”, Ren nods sympathetically. “Unlucky it wasn’t my day modelling.”

“You model?” The coffee he pours smells sweet and familiar.

“Just when Yusuke needs a study. How about you?”

“I don’t think I could handle the scrutiny.”

Ren laughs, bright. What surprises me is the way I feel the tension in my shoulders unwind.

“No, neither can I, but you get used to it when you realise it’s just, like, a job. _Angles, edges_ , you know? Passionless but not unpassionate.”

“I know.”

Only on the pen-tester writing pads within stationary stores are we ever really honest. Only on bathroom doors are we ever truly bland.

“I never hear you talk”, I say then, an observation with some petulance. “If you’re the leader, why don’t you talk? Offer advice?”

Ren hums, taps his fingers on his coffee mug. “Running a group like this, it’s about supporting one another. Safe space, safe outlet... sometimes words aren’t the answer. It’s enough to know someone’s listening. I’ll only offer my piece if someone asks for it, or if the group needs some prompting.” He tilts his head at me a little. “Usually they don’t, though. You’re asking a lot of questions.”

“I suppose I’m never off the job”, I say and at his confusion I shake my head. “I’m a detective.”

“Ah, makes sense. You gonna use your detective connections and figure out all our backstories?”

I flinch, conceal it in a blink. “That would be unprofessional”, I tell him, and he laughs.

“Come next week. On time, too. Maybe you’ll find some benefit out of our little group.”

“I don’t need—“

“I didn’t say you needed anything”, he shrugs easily. “Only that maybe you’ll find whatever it is you’re looking for—oh, hold on, Shiho’s waving me down.” He gives me one last look. “See you next week?”

I can barely think in stretches of times so long. It’s always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I don’t think in Thursday’s or August’s or fortnightlies.

“See you then.”

He smiles and waves a little as he heads over to a dark haired girl and one of the two boys.

“Repulsed”, one girl says.

“Hyper”, another counters.

“You’re that Akechi guy, huh?”, a blonde haired girl says, cocking her hip against mine as she leans to take the coffee Ren left behind. I don’t know it yet, but she will become my best friend. How a moment can change a life, how extraordinary that moment must be. “Don’t worry, we have a whole confidentiality thing. Anything you say stays in the group, and no one’s gonna go around spreading word.”

“Oh”, I say a little dumbly. “Thanks.”

“No worries”, she grins cheesily. “I’m Ann Takamaki.”

“Nice to meet you, Takamaki-san.”

“If you want, a few of us are going over to the diner on central street. You totally wouldn’t be intruding.” Her smile is kind and unfaltering. “The group can be a little overwhelming at first. It’s good take it on a little at a time, get you comfortable with everyone.”

“I’m actually busy with work. I really shouldn’t have come today—”

“At least take my number”, she digs through her pocket and pulls out a glossy card, offering it to me. “My numbers the one on the back. If you ever want to hang out.”

The card is for a modelling agency. I recognise the company as one that was sued for defamation after a telepath idol was labelled as a telekinetic talkback. She won, though that wasn’t at all surprising.

“Sure”, I say, surprising myself. She beams.

“Cool, hope to see you next week.”

As I’m leaving, Ren catches my eye and smiles.

* * *

“I want you to forget about the Earth”, he says to me at 16. “Forget about the world and everything beneath it. Think of where you are. Where you will be. Don’t tie it to something as temporary as a floating rock in space.”

“Are politics so important to you?”

“Creation”, he corrects. “If you cannot create, then you have failed. I am creating a new Japan to live and thrive. It is nothing as simple as fame and politics. I am a generator, I am a captain—“

“God.”

“If God existed”, Shido says, “he would be at my feet. Edgar Allen Poe wrote that a falcon is trained by being blinded, suffering the whims of their owner until it’s will is only to serve.  _God_ expects us to sit and do the same. I will do no such thing. No one has a perfect faith. Not even you.” He curls a strand of my hair around his finger. “There is one thing for every choice that will cause you to decide something else. What is it then, I wonder, would have made you choose to decline this work?”

He turns, nonchalantly wipes his hands on the cloth hanging from the short bar. “Care for a drink?”

* * *

“Another woman”, Makoto sighs through the phone. I’m watching my workout sneakers tumble through the dryer, my landlady doing a sudoku beside me. “I don’t think it’s worth you coming down, though. There wasn’t really much to clear up from the scene.”

“Same as before?”

“Pretty much”, she answers. “We’re trying to contact family, she has someone listed as her sister in her phone but there’s no one picking up. We’ll drive there if she doesn’t pick up soon, just in case.”

* * *

It can be fun to look back at your life and pinpoint the moments where major changes were made. You might have been 15 when your best friend messaged you on your way to class and confessed their love for you—you take 7 minutes to reply but 9 months to decide. In those 9 months you ruin your relationship, try to kill yourself thrice and don’t even get a kiss worth talking about. All because you said  _I like you, too._ Normalise taking longer than a few minutes to make a decision. The world can wait, but the past will always stick around.

Everyday lives have things that happen, things you think about, and things you’ll forget if you don’t care about. Today is one of those days, and today is one of those things. This is a passing moment you will be privy to: another thing in another day of a life you know the barest scope of.

“Emiko is dead”, my former foster sister tells me on a late Friday afternoon. The sun is very bright on this day and there was no due forecast for rain despite the torrent on Thursday. I woke up that morning and brushed my teeth. I woke up that morning and had a coffee. I woke up that morning and must have done something for Death to come, and come in coincidences he does; sifting through the air for the ripest pickings, the pulpiest fruits. I haven’t seen my foster family since I had just turned 15. Death must have decided it’s time for us to reunite.

I shut the door on her. There’s something about panic that’s different when you aren’t face to face with someone. When someone’s looking at you, it’s a battle between holding it all in and letting it overflow, letting the snot and the tears and the godawful sound of spit in the back of your throat clog on your tongue. When you’re alone hysteria is just a word, a song. I feel greasy and heavy. My pants have a stain and my shirt is something I bought on the whim of reinvention. I don’t cry, don’t yell, don’t even shake, and I turn around and open the front door again. My sister looks unruffled.

“How?”, I ask and she shrugs, fiddling with her car keys. She can’t meet my eyes.

“Bathtub, apparently.”

“Oh.” Unexpected but not entirely out of the question. Emiko was always dramatic, always favoured the eyes over the intention.

“Yeah.” She licks her lips quickly, jutting a thumb over her shoulder. “The funeral is in about an hour. Thought you’d maybe wanna come.”

“I’ll have to get dressed”, I say, it comes out as a croak and she shrugs.

“I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion either”, she says and I almost scoff. This is Kaiyo. This is Kaiyo who wore a size 6 dress and 4 inch heels and cotton stockings that made her legs go on forever when she went for groceries. This is Kaiyo, wearing a pretty blouse and jeans, telling me my worst pyjamas yet are fine enough for our younger sisters celebration of death.

“Give me a couple of minutes to change.”

* * *

Water of the womb, I think as we pull up to a beach. 

“She had a strange habit growing up”, our foster mother is saying, fingers tearing around her already torn up tissue. “She must have been 10 when she started to sneak out of the house to go down to the reservoir; we’d find her there, just staring at the water. During the summer, I’d turn on the sprinkler for all the kids to play with since we didn’t own a pool and she—well he hated it, but  ** [redacted]** , that’s my second eldest”, she informs me with a nod, “would toss Emi over her shoulder and make her join in. Emiko stopped for a while after my divorce but started it up again in high school. The sink, the shower, the bath—I thought maybe she had a phobia but no, she was fine with it. She loved the rain, too. We started to find her at the beach just doing what she’d always do when she’d be around water: stare. Like she didn’t know what to make of it. And—God I thought she was doing so well. She’d just gotten reconnected with her biological sister and...” She shakes her head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry”, she says to me, offers a bow, “were the two of you friends? She never mentioned having any male friends.”

“Sorry”, Kaiyo mutters when the service is over, the both of us standing back as the condolences continue. I shake my head.

“It’s better this way, trust me.”

The sea is so special. It inspires and it desires, it never stops moving. Not for a moment does it ever stop breathing. I don’t ever remember thinking Emiko’s fixation with water was strange. Rather, I don’t remember thinking a lot about anything back then. 

The waves roll on the shoreline. The salt lifts the air. The shrines on the height of a low cliff were lovely, almost. A stone path leading the way to the lookout.

Kaiyo’s hand is loose on my shoulder, a short touch some distant part of me remembers.

“You okay?”

“Do you want to know who killed her, Kaiyo?”, I ask. The ocean, forever taking and giving and taking again. Withholding. Forcing.

“What?”, her voice is shaky. “Why would you say that? She _killed_ herself. She drowned herself in the bath. Don’t say that.”

I closed my eyes against the sea spray. The ocean. The beach. The one place that ties the whole world together, because when you stand at the edge of it, you could be staring out at anything. Anyone. 

There’s a text waiting on my phone.

**MN:** _Sister dead via suicide. DP thinking it was all just a copycat caused by media hype. Wouldn’t be the first time._

_You believe that?_ I considered replying.

“Sorry”, I say to Kaiyo. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay.” I know by her tone of voice that it really isn’t, but her hand stays soft on me. “You’ve been doing good, right? That’s what I’ve heard.”

“From who?”

“Aiko and I went to university together”, she explains. “She said she works the same building as you.”

“Red hair?” She lets go of me to gesture at herself.

“No, sort of blonde. She has a gap in her teeth.”

The temp who keeps saying good morning even in the afternoon. I’d began to wonder if she was just broken.

“I’m okay.”

She frowns at me then, hair bouncing on her shoulders and not abiding to any gravitational purpose. She’s just as I remember, round faced and freckled but effortless. Always effortless. Heart-shaped. Pale lips that don’t match her mouth but decidedly contain her complexion to something beautiful.

“You’re married”, I point out before she can say anything, nodding to her hand. She grabs at it immediately, as if she’d forgotten it was there.

“Yeah, just last autumn. He’s... he’s really good to me. I’m happy.”

“That’s good, Kaiyo.”

I didn’t know what to do about learning new things about people I thought I already knew. I still don’t know. Cosmically, I wonder why I showed up at all. It’s just another story, another length of string tying me to a life that isn’t my own. I could have shut the door on my sisters pretty face. I should have.

I stare at the ocean. I think of hollow baths. I feel as though I’m missing something.

This must be how Emiko felt.

A nearby man says, as if I’m grieving, as if I look stupendously mournful: “I’m sorry for your loss, sir. Were you close?”

“Not really”, I reply. It wasn’t me who played with her under the sun and through the water. It wasn’t anyone I knew. I could have said, to my foster mother,  _**[redacted]**? What kind of name is that?_

“I’ll say goodbye to mom and then I can drive you home”, Kaiyo says, touches my elbow this time, but I smell her perfume first. “Unless you want to stay a little longer?”

I wonder if there’s anything about me that says I want to stay.

The drive back is as tense as the drive to the beach. The radio isn’t on and rain clouds inch across the sky. Kaiyo’s a nervous driver, I note, or maybe she’s just nervous about our proximity.

I’ve worn her hand-me-downs. I’ve helped her paint her nails.

“Bye, then.” I tell her when she pulls up to my apartment complex.

“Maybe you could come by the house some time”, she forces out. “I have some of your old things in storage. Photos, too. We could go through it.” This must have been brewing for some time. I can feel my face scrunch up, my defences spike and dwindle all in the same breath. It’s lethargy at its worst, and I just want to get out of this creased suit and crawl into bed.

“I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

“ ** [redacted] ** —”

“Goro”, I cut in. “My name is Goro.”

“Goro”, she repeats. “Sorry.” Her hands slide from the steering wheel and into her lap. “Sorry”, she repeats.

“Let’s forget this. It’s better that we’re not in each other’s lives. It’s for the best.”

“Mom still asks about you.”

Proverbial knife, meet waiting wound.

“What do you tell her?”, I question delicately. “What will you tell her? Will you tell her she spoke right to my face and didn’t recognise me? Or are you going to tell her I’m doing good? That I’ve got a nice husband and a nice house, that I’ve got two kids and do school pick-ups in the afternoon? Like _you?_ ”

“I tell her that you’re okay”, Kaiyo whispers, “that you think of her, too.” The click of my throat is audible. 

“Good. It’s the truth.”

In a surprisingly easy movement I get out of the car, straightening my shoulders before leaning back down, my hand braced on the door. “One more thing. How did you know where to find me, Kaiyo?”

Kaiyo frowns at me. I’ve braided that hair. Those fingers have braided mine. We’ve shared gum and stood on each other’s shoulders to climb trees.

“I called a number Aiko gave me and asked for you. Your boss picked up.”

There are flowers at my apartment door, a familiar kind I always see at the office. I stare at them, transfixed. 

I think of that Akechi in the books, the one with words with a fated dissonance and eyes that can see things that I just can’t. The first time I listened to one of his adventures I was 13 and under the watchful eye of a different foster sibling, older than us all by years—he’d made the words sound so natural, so familiar in their own clauses, holding the book up against his legs so I might read along with him. Winding streets filled my mind and mysteries held captive as syllables got stuck on my tongue. We’re so unalike, Akechi and I and the world in which he resides, but for that moment in time I felt like someone else knew how badly a person could want something. That Akechi—he would know to be strong at a funeral. He wouldn’t fight for the best eulogy, but he’d grace the room with honesty. I pick up the card tucked into the flowers, read the signature before the note.

Shido Masayoshi may not have twenty faces, but he still has one that terrifies me.

Like a build up of all the days intensity, I suddenly felt distraught. The worst thing I could do to myself—I wanted to do that. I wanted to cut up my face and tear off my hair, I wanted to make every step I took hurt and I wanted each breath to feel like a butterfly enclosure in my throat— tight doors, tight locks, _trying trying trying_ to get out. I wanted the flooding to stop.

I wanted to buy cigarettes and drink alcohol and spend the night hunched over the toilet trying to chase a feeling I’ve yet to recognise. I wanted to hit the wall until it’d be safe to say I needed an x-ray and I wanted to write sentences so long that they lose all meaning. Because I can. Because what is anything without the ugly, awful things. I could fuck and fuck and _fuck_ myself past the point of cumming—I can’t feel it anyway. I can’t hear anything, can’t taste. Fuck and fuck and _fuck_ all of the bad shit away. I sound like running water. What does it matter what I  see? What I  see doesn’t make sense. I see you crying yourself to sleep at night, I see you pinching your thigh in the mirror, I see the drug operation a quarter of a block from the local police station, I see a shotgun-wedding-homicide-suicide in the year of 1979 where the brother of the bride also stole her garter to wear. 

The flowers mock me.

I fall asleep and have multiple desperate dreams in one sitting.Vivid colours branching from my throat into the skies, swallowing a cigarette so it might reach my copper lungs and light a light there, running on a treadmill at the edge of the earth, eating a mango parfait in a street I don’t recognise. At the best of times, I believe dreams won’t make sense. And when you look for answers you’ll find answers because your subconscious is always at work even if you aren’t really conscious of it.  _Yes, you don’t love him. Yes, you might fuck up on that test. Yes, you were raped, here’s a reminder, it happened, it’s real. Yes, you’re alive, so deal with the consequences. Yes, look here, look now!—this monster, you know who he is, don’t you?_

Even in sleep I never get any rest.

_ My condolences to your younger sister. It is important in times such as these we measure the strengths of our relationships, families found and families from blood. Blood is not thicker than water, not with the strength of the tide, although blood stains far worse. _

_ S.M _

* * *

When I ask my doctor why I wake up every morning with a headache, he cites stress and sleep and sugar intake. To spite him, I stop off at Yon-Germain. I’m still rolling the taste of toothpaste around in my mouth, and my hands feel awfully clammy beneath my gloves and the pastries look sickening—I want them all. I want to avoid the look the passing middle-aged women just gave me.

“Akechi”, Ren bumps into my view, a quiet sort of smile on his face. “Hey.”

I feel weirdly self conscious, readjusting the slump of my shoulders.

“Amamyia-kun. Good morning.”

“Call me Ren. Getting anything?”, Ren leans down slightly, surveying the baked goods through the glass. My fingers tighten on my briefcase.

“I’m not sure if I have an appetite after all. They’re pretty to look at, nonetheless.”

“The shortcake is my favourite”, Ren continues. “Very pretty.”

“Do you come here often, then?”

“When I have the time”, Ren smiles, going to add something else but the rain starts up again, as torrential as it’s been these past few months. It catches both of our attention, and as the line in at the counter lessens, we stay put in our small corner. The city seems foggy from the accessway.

“Pretty”, Ren comments, an afterthought. I look at him. Watch him watch the rain.

“It is”, I agree.

“It rained one of the first days I was here in Tokyo”, he says, squinting, and I squint with him. Perhaps there is something about the rain that eludes me, some answer to why Ren Amamyia is as stable as he is—perhaps he just counts drops of rain, watches grass grow, dries pearls of rice.

A shoe settles on my own, a nudge for attention. My initial thought is _dirty, dirty, dirty,_ but Ren’s expression is soft. His foot stays there, it must be a habit he has with his friends.

“I’ve got to head off”, he says but stays in place. 

“Work?”, I ask.

“Yeah, clinic hours are awful”, he rolls his eyes but he’s smiling still. “We should get lunch some time.”

“Why?”

“Why? You do eat lunch, don’t you?”

“No I mean.. I...”

“You seem like someone I’d like to know”, Ren says thoughtfully. “We should hang out soon.”

“I don’t have your number.” Ren waves a hand, his foot finally sliding away.

“Just ask Ann for it, you two hang out, right? I can never remember my phone number anyway. Hear from you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah”, I echo. “Have a good day.”

As he rushes out into the underground I wonder why he didn’t just give me his phone so I could put my number in.

* * *

Blood ran into an eye, red and burning hot. A snarl, like an animal in a cage, claws digging into the victim’s neck.

“Listen to me”, is said lowly, a whispered kiss in a cinema chair, a murmur during class, a threat to a woman in some back-alley in the middle of nowhere. “Listen to me.” Louder, thrumming, the hum of an airline flight, the purr of a car engine. The victim’s chin jerked, defiant—“You’re going to die. Your blood will return to its rightful owner. Your name cleared. Your life free. I’m doing you a favour.”

A grin so sharp and ugly. Shark teeth. Dogs claws. _Bad dog_ , I think. _Bad dog. Heel. Heel._

I do not know it yet, but this is my half-sister, crowded into a corner, about to die. 

I feel the fist come out of nowhere, the a satisfying snap cracking out as blood spurt from the victim’s cheek. She dropped to the floor like a doll, wheezing, mouth bloody. The air in the room changed, charged itself on mere presence alone. The air tightened around the assailant, set alight. Alive.

I let go of the photograph of the latest victim and it fluttered to the desk. Makoto stares at me, waiting, and I clear my throat, readjust myself in my chair.

“It’s possible”, I tell her.

“Anything’s possible”, she replies snappily, “but I want probability. I want answers you’re refusing to give to me. Do you think the suicide is related?”

“I couldn’t tell you without an artefact from the scene. From what I know, the suicide was a fairly despondent scene. No mutilation of any kind.”

There’s a long silence as Makoto rubs her brow.

“I apologise.” I shake my head.

“The case is stressful. You should probably take a break, do some aikido.”

“Like I have the time”, her persona softens, eyebrows slanting. “I don’t suppose there’s been any talk on your end?”

“Nothing substantial. I’m sorry I can’t focus on this more, my boss is pushing my attention on another case.”

“Isshiki, I heard.”

I run my tongue over my teeth quickly.

“And from which rumour circle did you hear that?”

Makoto’s arms cross loosely but I watch her shoulders straighten up. “The Isshiki case is long before you or I, and even then it’s still a suicide. Why her?”

“What do you know?”

“Why are you dodging the question?”

“Must every conversation between us be an interrogation?”

“Yes.” There is a hint of humour she offers me before shutting me out again. “Answer the question.”

“One for one”, I bargain.

“Deal.”

“Wakaba Isshiki has previous ties to my employers interests.”

“Cognitive abilities?”

I wag my finger at her. “What do you know about Isshiki?”

Makoto reluctantly leans back. “She was a heavy influence in the study of cognitive abilities before the assimilation of the underworld and the human world. When it came to experience, I believe it was she herself who conducted a majority of the subject-based experiments. She killed herself and her daughter survives her to this day. Why does Shido Masayoshi have interest in cognition?”

“Call it old hobbies. Where is Futaba Isshiki now? Rather, Futaba Sakura.”

Makoto’s face goes blank and I’m bitterly reminded of the time we played poker.

“I can’t disclose that information.”

“But you know.”

“Of course I know.”

“But why do  you know?”, I press. “Daughter of a dead commissioner and sister of one of Tokyo’s most prized prosecutors. How do _you_ fit into play?” She stares coolly at me, unaffected.

“How do you fit into one of the most notorious and popular political parties known to the Tokyo region? It seems coincidence might have the best of us.” I stand and sigh.

“The world is too full of them.”

“The world is too small”, she echoes. “Are you leaving?”

“If that’s all you need, then yes. I have a prior appointment.”

“I suppose the contents are classified.”

“No”, I say casually. “I’m actually going shopping for a new pair of boots. I’ll email you a follow-up of my findings today. I don’t think they’ll prove useful at all, mind you.”

“Appreciated. Have fun boot shopping.”

“One more thing, if I might ask.”

“Like my saying no could ever stop you.”

I look back at her. It’s here my fears come to light. It’s here a normal person might be at their breaking point. I am far past the point. But when met with people far too like us, we can’t help but agitate. 

“Do you ever wish you could cast aside your loyalty to the police and pursue a different career?” Her eyebrows rise into her hairline and I continue indifferently: “The police have wronged all communities. The corruption, the brutality... you’re a good person, you have strong morals. I can’t continue to understand why you work for them.”

The look she’s giving me in this moment is so closely mirrored by Haru’s disappointed frown that I have to wonder if they’ve ever practiced it in the mirror together. 

“Did that feel good to get out?”, she asks. 

“Yes”, I decide with little consideration.

“You don’t know anything”, Makoto continues. “Not really. You’re just a lackey. You see so much but do they even show you anything?”

* * *

I was convinced by our fifth outing that Ann Takamaki fought against any linear organisation life offered her.

She’s every bit the model walking through Harajuku, a brim hat on her head, some designer sports jacket, fashionable loose pants, sneakers and her bag on her shoulder. She insists on keeping my hand in the crook of her elbow. While Harajuku is painted in bright blues and subtle yellows, Ann’s pearly earrings and smile lighten every street.

(Once, when I let out an awful, wet kind of cough I learned that she is the kind of person to keep everything in her handbag. Gold star stickers, bubble blowers, bubble gum, hairbrush, zip-ties, the spare keys to five other people’s apartments, cat treats. The cough-drop she gives me colours my tongue blue, and it’s then Ann frowns and holds up the actual silver packaging, apologising and saying what I was really eating was blue lemonade suckers.)

(On another day her dress billows out behind her in my periphery, a salmon pink, vintage looking thing—not exactly the hits of this summer. The lacy ruffles and high collar, and her laugh as we cycle down Kanda streets. She holds on tight, goes on in my ear about how her a friend would do this for her back in America, how they’d spend hours circling the neighbourhood for her because she could never learn how to ride a bike. The sky was orange. I laughed with her.)

The cakes she sets out when we sit at some local park area are beautiful. A strawberry cream one, a caramel cupcake, one with thin slices of figs across the slice like the scales of a fish and a slice of apple pie.

Ann taps her fork against her mouth.

“I got to a point where hurting myself just wasn’t enough anymore”, she’s saying. “I didn’t know why I was doing it, why I didn’t feel anything when I did it... I realised that I wanted to move on so bad but I was afraid of losing the one event”, she holds up a finger, “that made me who I am today. I carried guilt around me for a long time. It ate me alive, but I had to forgive myself. But I _didn’t_ forgive myself for moving on.”

My fork clicks against hers as we both go for the crispy edge of the pie’s crust. I relent, go for the fig instead.

“Why are you telling me this, Takamaki-san?

She stares and I’m forced to look up.

“I look at you and I see a lot of me. I don’t mean that in a weird way, just—”

“I get it.” I’m not sure I do. She smiles, regardless. Continues.

“I’d like to be your friend, if you’ll let me, because I think we could really get along. We _do_ get along. You’re a good person, I can tell. And we all need more friends in our lives. What do you say?”

“I’d.. like that.”

“Great”, she beams. “Call me Ann, okay? Is it okay if I call you Goro? I understand if it isn’t.”

Ann doesn’t have some mystical power. She’s not part fae, doesn’t have the beguile like some of the ancient goddesses’ kin, she can’t turn invisible and she told me that she once tried to become part of the Wiccan community but was so enthusiastic they asked her to leave. She’s completely harmless, completely human, and breaks down my walls like they’re made of clumped sand. They probably were.

“I don’t mind.”

* * *

**RA:** _yes I like cake_

**RA:** _the question is the coffee_

**GA:** _There are glowing reviews for the latte._

**RA:** _fantastic_

* * *

“How special you are”, he crowds over me, voice low with a reverent kind of possession. “God has given you a gift—you witness creation,  **[redacted]**. Life and death are checkpoints. You... you...”

What is love measured by if it’s not measured by devotion? What has love ever been for me to know it so vaguely? Love. Love is reincarnation, love is birth, love is fleeting. _Recycle_. If you draw a triangle and put those three words at each point, surely some meaning comes from it. Love is the treasures you keep, the ones you stuff so far into your mattress they cannot breathe.

His hands push mine into the bedsheets, his cock harsh inside of me. I am 17. I am barely anything yet.

* * *

**[Unknown Number]** : _I got it from Makoto, I hope you don’t mind. Regardless of my opinion of your work and relation to politics, I think it’s vital for us empaths to keep in touch. As I said before, I’d like to be a support for you if you so needed it._

**AT:** _nooo it wz like this nut crem pat w/ choc flakes n cookie n i DIED_

The flowers are dying on my counter.

* * *

Things I know: I have met Ren more times than I realise. Ren hasn’t exactly hidden this fact but he hasn’t brought attention to it either. Ren doesn’t push. Ren waits until he’s spoken to, Ren doesn’t come alive until someone asks him to be but he likes to pretend this isn’t fact.

“I don’t hate sweets”, I can hear myself saying, “but I’m not exactly partial to them. Fads tend to be fairly similar, so I’m more curious about its popularity than its taste.”

“That’s pretty well-detached just for a piece of cake”, Ren points out.

“It’s what my presence here and the cake itself represents”, I let a little tease slip into his smile. “Why don’t we give it a try?”

“Why did you take me here today?”, he continues, his chin is leant on his palm. “If you’re so aware of your public imagine then you must know what we look like, sitting here.”

“Friends often have meals together, Amamyia-kun.”

“Ren”, he corrects, “and with heart shaped cups?”, Ren’s finger taps his coffee cup, the handle of which is a heart. He pauses, and I feel that my face is scrunched up. “Sorry. I’m only teasing you.”

“I know”, I reply. “If it really does make you uncomfortable—”

“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

I go to reply, but a loud gasp comes from a few tables over.

“It’s Akechi-kun! Oh, I’d never thought I’d get to meet a celebrity!”

“Should we go up and say hi? He doesn’t look busy.”

“What if he’s actually mean in real life?”

“It looks like we’re out of time”, I set my fork down. “It’s a shame, I would have liked to tried the cake.” I pause. “And relaxed with you a little while longer. We should go.”

“Don’t let them ruin your afternoon.”

I shake my head. “I’m only going to cause problems if I stay. It’s a wonder you even want to spend time with me at all.”

“Don’t put yourself down like that”, Ren’s frown is stern. “How do you expect anyone to get to know you when you keep making judgements on yourself?”

“They make judgements on me regardless of what I do or say”, I tilt my head, “and I wasn’t under the impression anyone was getting to know me.”

“What do you call me, then?” I twitch a smile.

“My strong acquaintance.”

“Well your strong acquaintance would like to be your friend.” I wonder what God is up there throwing these people into my path. Ren’s frown lessens to a smile. “One minute you’re this total snob and the next you’re kicking yourself. You’re smart, you know who to be and when you need to be him. Sometimes I don’t know which one of you I’m talking to.”

Things Ren makes sure I know: he likes me.

I smile, wide and genuine. Surprised.

“You know, I’ve thought the exact same about you.”

Ren laughs brightly. His hand is midway on the table, I could reach out and hold it if I wanted to.

“I guess we’re too alike for our own good.”

“Too scared of what others might think.”

Ren looks at me softly. And my heart thuds in my ears.

“Forget about them”, he says. “It’s just me and you here. What else matters?”

Under the table, Ren bumps our feet. Our ankles hook and I feel myself flush. Ren’s coffee cup covers his mouth.

“Okay?”, he asks. It’s not _are you okay_ , it’s not... I swallow. Stab the strawberry on my plate. Maybe I liked Ren just because he liked me. I liked Ann for her persistence, her honesty, and I liked Makoto for her open dislike of me, initially. I liked Ren because he wasn’t shy. Because he wanted me.

I didn’t have to touch him to figure that out, at least.

“Okay”, I reply, and clamp the strawberry between my teeth.

“Good. Now tell me more about your bland, boring life, Goro.”

* * *

“It’s called a follow-up call”, Ren laughs when I get home, juggling my phone against my ear as I unlock the door. “You never go for a job and try to show initiative by calling too soon after the interview?”

“I’ve never had a job interview in my life.”

He whistles. “Wow, well, I like to make my intentions known, it saves a lot of trouble.”

“Oh? Enlighten me.”

“I liked going places with you today”, he says simply. “I’d like to go more places with you in the future.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes it’s just that simple—you can’t ask why about everything.”

“The wise words of Ren Amamyia.”

“I’m just being honest”, he taunts and I shake my head, smiling.

“It’s almost annoying how honest you are.”

“So are you. Honest, I mean. More than you might think—well, you actually were a little annoying when you were taking a photo of your slice of cake but I can look past that for the sake of a niche Instagram.”

“I feel like we’ve lost track of the conversation.”

“I like you”, he says. “I don’t want you to think too much about it. Did Ann invite you to the firework festival next week?”

“She did.”

“So come with. It’d be nice to spend more time with you.”

“You want to spend time with me”, I repeat.

“Yeah”, Ren replies, amused. “I do.”

I sometimes feel like a dog that begs for something sweet. How much he wants me—

it’s so different.

“I’d like that.”

“Good, I’d like that too.”

“I’m going to go now.”

“I hope you have very sweet and endearingly pleasant dreams.”

“I’d ask if you were mocking me but I’m afraid you aren’t.”

“You know I’m not. Night, Goro.”

“Goodnight, Ren.”

* * *

The woman hums, nodding as she speaks.

“That Sakura-san always gets deliveries. So much for such an old little man, though he did used to have a few teenagers mulling around the shop! I remember because one of them used to work the register.”

* * *

“Quick!”, Ann snaps her fingers in my face, “what is the highest ranking song by Shania Twain that topped charts at number 2 in 1998?”

“When you said you wanted to grab dinner with us, I didn’t think we’d just end up feeding into your diner quiz addiction”, Ren says from beside me. “Also, _You’re Still The One_.”

She scribbles the answer down onto the page while Yusuke continues to draw some abstract depiction on the napkin beside his empty bowl.

“Which UK musician starred in a movie adaption of an acclaimed sci-fi novel in 1984?”

“Ann”, Ren intones, “seriously, stop.”

She pouts and puts the pencil down. “You’re a fountain of knowledge, Ren. I need to use my assets.”

“So I’m just an asset to you now?”

“It was Sting”, I tell her. Ann cackles delightedly and Ren grapples to take the pencil from her.

“Did you know”, Yusuke says distractedly to me, “that they once decided to pretend they were half siblings fighting for their deceased mother’s fortune and duelled in a 777 parking lot? It drew quite the crowd.”

The two continue to bicker over the quiz. Ren’s foot is hooked around mine.

“I believe it”, I tell him.  
  


* * *

Shido lit a cigarette in the car and puffed it as we walked across the parking lot into the lobby. It was a colder night, the wind chopping like a maniac at any exposed square inch of flesh it could find. I could see the tension cooking in Shido, sometimes I was sure I could smell it—a flat smell that was both stale and somehow decaying. Shido continues to smoke the cigarette in the elevator. This is agitation.

Shido took the cigarette out of his mouth and examined it, unmindful of the ash falling between his feet. He turned, very slightly, then dug the cigarette into the wall. This is petulance. The cigarette crumpled to the floor as the elevator stopped and he stalked out, directing me down the hall.

There’s a strange itch to Shido’s actions that hasn’t been there before he’s usually a controlled man but today he—he sort of glows. It’s an unkempt energy. He takes off his glasses and tucks them in his pocket.

Suddenly Shido’s fist smacked me sideways, to the bed, I felt the skin of my lip give way to the heat and I sucked in a breath, fingers and hands shaking as they danced around my face. My vision bleary, my ears ringing, the bed soft. Shido watched, eyes narrowed, this was the look of expectation. A look of memory. I didn’t let myself cry, but I couldn’t stop the shaking. This is proving you have power and reinstating it.

I wondered what had made him so upset.

* * *

**AT:** _cup othr friends comin 2 firewrks fest!!!!!_

**AT:** _dw they will like u_

**AT:** _u need a yukata???_

**GA:** _I’ve got one._

* * *

While I can remind myself the neutrality of a yukata, it doesn’t stop me from tugging at it uncomfortably. I wonder if I just look like a wannabe-model, overly tall with my boots and androgynous with my hair.My fingers creak my gloves as they curl at my elbows. A few people smile at me as they walk past, a group of young girls giggle and wave. 

I must look fine enough. Passable.

Passable.

“The least you could do is _say_ you’re in a relationship”, a loud man complains. His yukata is a sort of lime green, tucked up around his elbows and crinkled at the hem. His hair is bleach blonde but his roots are coming in and I realise, spotting Yusuke beside him, that this must be the infamous Ryuji Sakamoto.

(“Legend has it that if you say Ryuji Sakamoto three times into a mirror, he’ll appear and judge you on what skincare you use”, Ann had clutched her phone in her lap, deadly serious as she spoke to me. “He’ll also, like, eat everything in your fridge and steal your shampoo.”

“He got so shitty at me for using this apricot scrub once”, Ren squinted into the middle distance.)

“I genuinely don’t understand what it is you’re talking about”, Yusuke tilts his head, impressionistic of a confused puppy. “They were all looking at you.”

“Just sickening, aren’t they?”, Ann slings against my side and I jump. She’s watching the two with a smile and looks up at me. Her lips are as red as her yukata, her hair intricately styles and her cheeks glittery. “Once, Ryuji tried to fight a guy who called Yusuke’s work mediocre, but Ryuji’s short as fuck so if you imagine a... a big _rat_ fighting a German Shepard, it was a lot like that. Yusuke has it depicted in a series of sketches called _‘Loves Endless Hubris.’_ ”

“Do you have to tell that story to everyone who hasn’t met me before?”, Ryuji complains, now in earshot. He grins when he faces me though, grabbing my hand to shake it. “Nice to meet you, man. Heard a lot about you.”

I shake back, wincing a little. “I’m not sure my stories could compare to yours.”

“Nonsense”, Yusuke waves a hand. “You’re a detective. Mystery follows you.”

“I don’t know about that, but he can type 112 words per minute”, Ann says proudly, hands behind her back. I blink at her for a few moments.

“I can?”

“Are we late?”

Ah, I think as I turn, Tokyo’s too small of a place.

Flanking Ren is both Haru and Makoto. For what it’s worth, they both look equally surprised at my being here.

“Not at all, we just got here ourselves”, Yusuke says.

Makoto takes the few steps forward to greet me, bowing slightly. “I take it this is your friend from the group.” My mouth goes dry and Haru blinks a few times, like oh.

“Goro, this is Haru and Makoto”, Ann introduces, splaying a wide hand to them both. “Makoto’s the one we send in when Ryuji’s getting his ass kicked and Haru is the one who pays for Thursday night frozen yoghurt.” 

“Nice to meet you”, my smile is twitchy. Ren tilts his head, and I notice he isn’t wearing his glasses. His yukata is a soft grey. 

“And you”, Haru says, clasping her hands out in front of her. “Shall we get going? The festival waits for no one.”

Everyone clamours in a practiced move to leave the underground but Ren lags behind, and I lag with him. Our elbows bump and I see him glance at my hands before glancing at my face.

“You look nice”, he says faintly.

“Come on!”, Ryuji hollers down the stairs and I cough a small laugh, squeezing my hands in my sleeves.

“Ryuji waits for no one, it seems.”

It’s a disorderly walk to the festival and the group shifts like clockwork, purely dependant on Ann and Ryuji’s rapid mood swings. Eventually, I catch towards the back and Makoto slows down with me, walking with her hands behind her back as I mirror her. Ahead, Ryuji tucks Ren under his arm and messes his hair.

“So you met through their support group?”, she questions lightly and I shoot her a look

“It was coincidence. I was following a lead.”

“I should have probably put it together”, she continues, “what with Ren talking about some detective he met. He’s been going on about you for a while.”

“He barely knows me.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants. Ren’s always been a little impulsive.”

“The heart can want things too quickly. Magnetism over genuinity.”

“Ren is genuine”, Makoto says. “I only mean to say that if you’re using Ren and Ann for whatever it is Shido has you doing, I won’t hesitate to act.”

“Mako-chan”, Haru says softly, interjecting and smiling. Everyone else has milled ahead and I realise how slow Makoto and I had been walking. “I think Ryuji wanted to speak with you more about those aikido lessons.” Makoto purses her lips but resigns.

“Right.”

Haru and I watch her catch up, a blur of dark blue silk.

“Sorry about Makoto”, she says.

“She’s protective of those she loves, I know that.”

“She’s fiercely protective”, Haru agrees, “of you, as well.”

Haru’s yukata is a soft pink, adorned with a pearlescent design and wrapped tight around her thin body. She bows her head at me and offers her hand.

She isn’t wearing any gloves tonight, lace or otherwise. And I admire her painted nails as I place my hand in hers. She squeezes, and swings them down, her free hand coming to gently rest on my forearm as she lead us in the direction of the group. I could see Ann’s hair even in the distance, Ren’s bright red yukata and Yusuke’s sweeping gestures. I felt as though we were somewhat promenading for a silent audience, and maybe we were. We were both well-known in media, both had our fair share of speculation.

She keeps holding onto my hand though, trailing us through the crowd. I hadn’t held hands with someone since I was a child.

“Ann and Ren speak very favourably of you”, Haru says then, her voice barely carrying in the chaos of the festival. I have to tilt slightly to hear her. “Makoto, despite what you might assume, worries for you much like an older sister would. Yusuke insists your heart is pure as driven snow.”

“Has he been reading fairytales again?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Ryuji reads to him. We all need inspiration from somewhere.”

The lights lining the street dissolved into warm blurs around us. I felt strangely dependant of Haru’s hold on me, each step I took was careful, I felt as though if I turned my head too far one way a book would slip from my crown.

“I often come through here on warmer days”, she tells me, leaning her temple against my bicep. “It’s rained so much lately, though. The last time I was able to, it was the middle of the night and I bought a very nice scarf from one of the stalls that was just about to close.”

“Is it wise to be out on your own so late?”

“The world is build on a belief system”, Haru lifts her head, smiles. “I’m sure I’ll be quite safe. I’m also sure I could defend myself, if need be.”

I don’t say anything to that.

“I’ve been quite anxious as of late”, she confesses. “I’ve been attempting to reign control after my fathers passing, you see, but I have to juggle other responsibilities as well. I’m confident in myself, but it does get to me from time to time.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “You’re fine. It’s my own burden—I bring this up only because I asked Makoto to show me the photographs from the most recent murder, that young woman with the sister who committed suicide.”

My lip throbs and I run my tongue over it quickly.

“I was under the assumption you avoided this sort of work.”

“I do, but I thought I could perhaps shed some light.” She pauses. “I wasn’t able to, unfortunately, but I did feel something strange. A resonance, if you will.”

“A resonance?”, my voice is bland. I lick my lips again. “With what?”

She leans her head back against my arm. I duck my head as a low streamer limps lower over a short store roof. She continues speaking, as if she hadn’t heard me.

“When I was 18, I broke free from the fiancé my father had arranged my marriage to. It took a lot of my own strength, strength I didn’t realise I had, to realise the situation I was truly in. I had awful dreams where he was victorious and I remained like lowly gutterlife to him. My dreams aided my response in real life. My sleeplessness turned out to be my answer. Have you had any more dreams as of late?”

“Yes”, I say.

“And what do they tell you?”

“I’m not sure.” Her thumb smooths over my knuckle.

The thing about Haru, I think, is that she is every maternal figure you could imagine wrapped into one. She’s genuine, and comfort enfolded. Wisdom and guidance and understanding.

She says, just as we catch up with the rest of the group: “I’m a strong believer in karma, Goro-kun.”

She knows too much.

“There you are”, Ren says warmly, eyes squinting at us like maybe he was too used to his fake glasses. “Mind if I steal him from you?”, he asks Haru and she squeezes my hand before letting go.

“Just make sure you find us before the fireworks, you know how Ann is.” Ren nods and accepts a kiss on the cheek before she walks daintily away, easily sidling in against Makoto’s side. Huh.

“I thought”, Ren begins, realigning my attention, bumping against my shoulder, “I thought maybe we could walk around for a bit. See the sights.”

I recognise the smile that slides onto my mouth as the night goes on; wide and toothy, the wind dries my teeth and tongue we laugh with our heads tilted back, spurred closer by the growing crowd and the cold, the juvenile idea that death can not touch us, that the world will wait for them.

I used to hate that smile. I’d convinced myself at some point in life that the giddy feelings of hope and pleasure weren’t mine to keep. They were stolen, echoes of other people’s lives. Being here now, with these people so entangled within my life, I knew I could easily become addicted. Exuberance was an intoxicant, but it wasn’t any solution.

Ren kept leaning in to talk to me, pointing out at a particular things and laughing at a jokes that weren’t very funny but needed some help. I wondered if what I was seeing was my own distortion—how everything tonight glowed so beautifully. I liked our absurdity and the way we ate cheap ice cream sandwiches and had to lick the melted chocolate out from between our fingers, every nook and cranny. I liked the idea that he liked me too, that maybe I could be something if he wanted me to be. With sugar sticky fingers, he smiled at me, the light of lilac lanterns painting him blue.

“You look like you’re having fun.”

I wanted, then. I wanted him with me in any way I could get it

“I am.”

The fireworks brimmed something nervous and excited in my chest. I was pressed between Ann and Ryuji as we stared up at the dark sky, Ann’s arms around my waist and Ryuji’s over my shoulder. Being with them all felt like slipping into a waiting roll, even Makoto pointedly directed me away from a spicy drink Yusuke had been passing around.

“Oh, dude”, Ryuji whistled, “look at that sick firework.” The sky exploded in pink and yellow, a sound of awe humming along the cheers.

“It’s _so_ sick, man”, Ren droned in our ears from behind and Ryuji let go of me to tackle him backwards.

The rain began midway through the firework show and I found myself suddenly pushed with the swell of the group beneath the roof of a convenience store.

“Oh my god”, Ann groaned loudly, squeezing out the end of her yukata. “I can’t believe this. I usually carry a hairdryer, too. The one night I don’t bring my bag.”

Ryuji’s eyebrows raise dubiously. “I swear you’re the only person in the world who’d carry a fuckin’ hairdryer.”

“Oh, no”, Ren says, standing beside me. “Goro _totally_ did in highschool.”

Makoto laughs abruptly, a loud snap in the air.

“Seriously, Goro?”, it seems I’ve lost credibility in Ryuji’s eyes. Haru is giggling. I push back my hair to glare at Makoto.

“I told you that in confidence.”

“It came into conversation”, she reasons.

“How does _that_ come into conversation?”

“I asked her if she had any teen-detective Goro stories”, Ren grinned cheekily at me.

“A shame about the rain”, Yusuke speaks up, staring up towards the sky. “We’ve been so swamped by it lately.”

“Yeah”, Ann agrees, hands paused on a scrunched up section of her yukata. “I’ve had at least three shoots cancelled because of the weather. You think it’s global warming?”

“I’ll call a car”, Haru interrupts, “it shouldn’t be too long.”

I feel Ren before he speaks. He leans into my space more than he ever has. His chin touches my shoulder, his head tilts, his voice is quiet, only for me to hear.

“Are you busy? I was going to go hit the bathhouse in Yongen after. They’re usually empty this time of night.”

I almost feel like saying that I haven’t been to a bathhouse since I was in a training bra. It’s hard to explain the transgender thing to myself, let alone Ren Amamyia.

“I might be recognised”, I say, but it’s not a no. He smiles.

“If you’re recognised I’ll push your head under the water. Or stand up and just generally divert attention while you make a hasty exit.” I laugh and he smiles. “Trust me, it’s totally empty on normal days. Yongen in general is pretty empty. Sound good?” I nod and he seems pleased. I have to take a moment wonder who I really am in the eyes of those around me. I am someone to be admired, someone to be feared, someone to look down on, someone to go down on. Shido sees a prize and a valued tool... so what does Ren see? What does he see when he looks at me? What _will_ he see?

I want to touch myself and pull open each pocket and  _see_ where I started and where I began. I want to dig in so deep that I find my ending. I want to see my heart growing, my brain developing, my lungs breathing. I want to know the exact moment I kicked from within my mother’s stomach and I want to know what it was like to hear her voice for the first time— _inside._ When I was just a second subconscious. When I was the best excuse for her to take care of herself.

Ann probably sees some victim who’s too afraid to speak up, too antisocial to make viable connections on his own. Makoto, I know for sure from the one time I accidentally touched her hand, sees a rival in mind and occupation but also a child she can’t help but reprimand, protect. Ren...

At night when I stretch out on my pillow, I am like every other person in Japan trying to fall asleep. Maybe I count sheep, maybe I think about my financial situation or maybe I think about each and every moment that has lead to something big. I have two legs, two feet, and one million, trillion unblinking eyes all for you to see. What am I?

What is he?

* * *

The bathhouse is more run-down than Yongen-Jaya’s brochure cares to admit, but the woman currently working a shift smiles cheerily at Ren and asks him how Sojiro is doing, says she needs to stop by soon for a cup of coffee, and informs us both that it’s been an incredibly slow night.

The lockers line the walls and centre of the room in rows, a mix of mauve and dull greens. Ren’s actions are easy, practiced as he sits on a bench and slips off his shoes. I take the other side but at least he doesn’t mention it.

“When I lived across the road I used to come here almost every day after school”, Ren comments, voice light in the air. “My cat would sit by the lockers and wait for me to finish.”

“Really?” I fold my tie around my fingers, tucking it into the locker. Ren’s laugh is short and sweet. I hear the clatter of his keys.

“Yeah. I’d take him to school with me, too. Hide him in the desk.”

“How troublesome.” Another laugh. From the other side of the lockers, Ren taps his nails on the metal and says: _meet you in there._ Like this is some kind of boxing match.

I press my hand against my chest. Could be.

“Don’t look”, I say from around the corner. “Please.”

“Not looking”, Ren only replies.

It’s hard to remember how not to feel small around other men. It’s something I tried to train out of myself—they can’t tell what’s underneath my suit, but they know what a lack of Adam’s Apple means, they have assumptions when they hear a higher voice, see longer hair.

The water levels out at my collar as I step in and his eyes stay closed. I take a moment to just look at him, admire him in the environment of a humidity forced.

“You can open your eyes”, I say.

He opens his eyes but doesn’t look at me, only settling more comfortably against the bath wall. I find myself subconsciously trying to match each deep breath he takes. Eventually, he glances over at me—a lazy glance, with a mildew smile.

“Feel good?”

“A little”, I admit. “However I’m not really a fan of the heat.”

“You get used to it. Lucky the regulars aren’t here, there’s usually an old guy who keeps fucking with the water trying to get it hotter. At least, when I still came by.”

“You said you lived across the road?”

“Yeah, in Leblanc’s attic.” His head tilts onto his own shoulder and the vaguely placed lighting casts a shade on his face, his smile quirking towards me. “Would you believe it if I said I was a country boy?”

I think about Ren and what I know of Ren Amamyia. The undeniable ease in which he taps his card against the scanner in the underground, the way he has a smile for every stranger, seems to know everyone around every corner.

“Yes”, I admit. His smile doesn’t lessen, but his head tilts away again.

“I transferred here when I was 17, and the rest is just history. Sojiro was nice enough to give me a place to stay.”

I don’t ask about his family. “What made you want to work in the medical field?”

“My friend runs a clinic here in Yongen and I ended up doing a lot of volunteer assistant work for her”, Ren explains, “she was a good reference. And I like helping people, I guess.”

“Is that why you do the support group?” His smile is back.

“You’ve got a lot of questions, you’re not usually like this.”

“Is that bad?”

Ren makes a considering noise. “Depends on whether or not asking you questions is off-limits or not.” At my frown he laughs and shakes his head. “I’m kidding. You know I’m not going to push you.”

“I know”, I reply, surprising myself. “You... you can ask. I don’t mind. You’re right, it’s not really fair with how much I’ve been interrogating you. I suppose I’ve only been trying to figure out how someone can be so—“, from the corner of my eye, I know Ren is staring at me, “—so compassionate without having suffered in a sense. In my line of work, one can’t exist without the other.”

“So you’re asking for my sob story?” He doesn’t seem bothered, at least. Maybe amused. “I just choose to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“Doesn’t it get tiring?”, I ask. “Being lied to day in and day out? Letting people trample over you?”

“I think you’ll find there’s more people who’ll be honest with you when you believe them.” He looks at me then looks away. “Anyway, it’s not that much of a story. I transferred out here to Tokyo while I was still in high school because I stopped some guy from assaulting a woman. Apparently he was an upcoming politician so when he said I assaulted him, they weren’t going to dispute that.”

Something savoury sits on my tongue. Assumptions, relations.

“I see.”

“Told you it wasn’t interesting.”

“What about your family?”

“We’re not in touch anymore. Consequences of my actions”, he drawls and gives a tense grin. “I’m alright, though. I have good people in my life now, that’s what matters. What about you?”, he leans back and closes his eyes. “Any family?”

“You could google it.”

He smiles. “Yeah, I could.”

I shift in the water, stiff despite the coaxing relaxation the bathhouse brings. I don’t ever try to think about my relatives, foster or otherwise, and I know less about my father than I do quantum physics.

“My mother was a troubled woman”, I start carefully, staring out at the tiled edge of the bath. “It was often that I would find myself having to take care of her.” I tread my fingers through the water. “She was negligent, but I can’t blame her for it. When she became pregnant with me her own family disowned her and my father threw her aside. She loved him so much she was sick with it. What he did to her... it ruined her. She took her own life when I was quite young. I was left at an orphanage but spent most of my teenage years within a foster home.”

“You’ve been through a lot”, Ren comments. He’s looking again.

“It’s in the past. I have no reason to blame her either. The only one who deserves blame is my father. The worthless, degenerate excuse for a man who abandoned my mother—“, I stop myself, mouth caught between a waver and a vowel. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for our conversation to get so depressing.” The water makes a noise as Ren tilts his head back.

“I don’t mind. It’s nice to know more about you.”

“Is it?”, I smile wryly at him. “I’ve never told anyone about my family situation. I wonder why I told you?”

“Because we’re similar.”

I look down at the freckles on my hands, the lines of his palms and my pruning fingertips. I don’t think this is untrue, but I don’t think it’s entirely honest, either. It’s no secret the world has its shortcuts and mysteries, it’s potion-brewers and life-long vendettas crawling the globe. I wonder where Ren lies, in our world as it is. There’s something undeniably magnetic about him.

Maybe it’s only the human condition.

“I always felt I was to blame, too”, I confess to him. “I was... I was raised female”, the words are clunky, awkward coming from my mouth. “I felt like I was no better, abandoning what little I had left of her.”

“She’s still your mother”, Ren says easily. “You obviously cared about her a lot, and with the way you talk about her it’s safe to assume she cared a lot about you, too. I don’t think she’d be upset in knowing that you chose to take the path that lead you to becoming who you’re most comfortable as.”

“Are you ever phased?”, I ask, amazement not hidden in my voice.

“Oh, all the time”, he waves a hand, flicking a little bit of water at our feet. “But like I said, it’s nice to know more about you.”

For a while we just sit in the silence and the heat. I’ve never known companionship this way. Conversations without ulterior motive or power dynamics—just being. Just interest.

“Perhaps we are”, I venture. “Similar, That is. We’re both victims of the adults who unfairly impacted our lives. I’m even more sure of that after having talked with you, Amamyia-kun.”

Ren’s hand breaches the water to smooth his fringe away from his eyes.

“I thought I told you to call me Ren.”

“Ren”, I correct. “Habit, sorry. You’re very attuned to what people need to hear.”

“Haru calls it intuition.”

“You’re empathetic”, I lick my dry lips. “That makes a fair amount of sense.”

“Everyone’s empathetic”, he shakes his head. “It’s just a choice of whether or not you want to notice it. I’m not like Haru, or anything. Plain old human.” He says it like it’s a disappointing thing.

“What am I feeling?”, I ask impulsively. “Can you tell?”

Heat prickles the back of my neck as Ren looks over at me. Humidity curls my hair and thickens his. His smile is a twitch, a tired muscle at work.

“I just know people”, he says, but then his eyebrows furrow a little. “I know you.”

Ren is so easy to want because there is so much of him that gives. You can’t help but take what you can get. Someone who wants to know you, likes what they know—it’s exciting, addictive. I want him to touch me. I want him to know the things about me only I could know.

I look down at the water, let my toes wiggle beneath it.

“You’re a very interesting person, Ren.” Spotlight, I think. Camera. Action.

Ren’s smile is crooked, jubilant. It is endearment in an action. This is another one of those moments that sets life into play. This is a moment for the books.

“I like you, too”, he replies, as if it were the most easy thing in the world.

* * *

I didn’t recognise the words that left me, then. I felt like someone else, someone new, myself but for tonight parading in someone else’s shoes. In the slick of the rain outside and with the warmth of the bathhouse still clinging to our skin, I stepped into Ren’s space, cutting off whatever preamble he’d begun to suggest.

“You live nearby”, I said, “right?”

The rain always sounds so different in Yongen. During Autumn in Kichijōji, the local Wiccan community enchants the sky for but an hour, causing each drop that hits the floor to resemble the ring of a musical note; a small festivity for the musicians that fly in for the national concerto. Here it just sounds like shrapnel. It’s creating craters in the ground and if I went back outside I imagine it would feel like a pressure cleaner misplaced—pulling apart my skin with a burst. Ren coaxes my head up, away from his bedroom window, and presses our lips together. A heat coils in my stomach, pleasant as his tongue folds pliant against mine. There’s a part of me that drags him closer, a part that’s hungry and yearning. I need it fast, I need it breathless, I need to bleed. I can’t be sure of what I want.

That side of me is brushed away so easily as Ren’s hand settles in the middle of my chest, a firm but gentle reply. My thighs loosen around his waist but stay put. His breath is cold on my skin. I must be feverish.

Shido is here even now, in this bed, on these sheets.

Ren’s nose bumps mine. His lips are plush as we kiss.

And Ren is beautiful, like the rain.

His hands are everywhere, smooth and warm, pulling down my slacks, testing, and my fingers clench the sheets, a tense pulse pulling my back. There’s a soft moment of recognition, a hum as his tongue lavishes my chest, curls around the long scar down my arm. I have pins and needles. Ren’s hands are large and warm on my thighs. My ankles dig into his back. There’s a watermark on the ceiling, and Ren—

I wanted to know Ren the long way around, with the clauses and the fuck ups, the getting to know you dinners and the awkward silences. I wanted to make sure we became so acquainted that our hands would twitch if they weren’t touching, that his laughter would last long after any joke I told permitted. I wanted complete surveillance, complete security, the hard way.

“Ren”, I whisper, “Ren.” A wet kiss is pressed to my inner thigh, dragged up to my stomach, to my neck.

“You’re so hard for me”, he murmurs low, “so wet.” My whole body tenses, a breath caught in my throat, Ren’s fingers curl inside me.

I felt dizzy and breathless with his chest against mine. Bare skin to bare skin—I’d never had anyone this way before, never even entertained the idea. The backs of my knees felt sweaty and weird, my heart racing in my throat. I was shaking, shaking everywhere. I felt bottomless, good. _Unhinged_. I could see the first time Ren lost a tooth, the 15th birthday he spent alone, the first time he saw me, hunched over one of Crossroad’s tables speaking in low tones with Lala’s arm around me. I felt his curiosity, I felt his interest, I felt every astringent thought, and I feel his hands on me. I tug at him to kiss me again, bare skin against bare skin against bare skin, his cock sliding against the sharp line of my hip. I thought of how he served me coffee, how he bumped his shoulder against mine and smiled from under his eyelashes.

All these things spoke of him, answered questions I’d never ask.

“You’ve never done this before?”, he asks against me. My stomach clenches.

“The angle”, I say. Swallow. “Could never get the angle right. Didn’t feel good.”

“Feel good now?”

I gasp, arch into his touch.

“Goro”, he says, and his lips, wet wet wet, are suddenly hovering over mine, “tell me how good it feels. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“You know.”

“Tell me.”

A nectarine is my favourite fruit, when in season. It’s so overbearingly sweet and soft that I could go back for one more, one more, and eat enough that I’d be sick and still saying _one more, one more._

I think: _one more, one more._

I’m overwhelmed by how fast my heart can apparently beat.

* * *

“Want to join me?”

His words aren’t laced with innuendo or implications, it’s just a genuine question softened by the tilt of his head against the doorway, the loose clench of the towel in his hand. I shake my head regardless.

“I’ll go after you.”

“Alright. Feel free to borrow anything you need.”

Ren walked to the bathroom, shoulders lax and calm, like he wasn’t thinking about the way my life, my perceptions were shattering around me. And he wasn’t. He had no reason to be. He’s probably thinking about brushing his teeth, maybe making a cup of decaf for us both. We’re doomed. My guilt and consequences itching to rush up behind me, size up whoever’s inhabited Goro Akechi’s body and drag him down, down back to the Earth where he should be reborn again. And Ren, not clueless but not clued-in, safely pressed between knowing too much and not knowing anything at all. There was something coming, and it seemed like I was the only one who could feel it. I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to hold his hand a little longer, kiss him until breathing felt raw. I wanted to lie to Shido, to ignoreHaru’s thinly veiled warnings, I wanted to lie next to Ren for just another night, and then another night more. 

I traced the shape of my hip with my hand. Ren’s clothes were crumpled on the floor, but at some point between us taking off our shoes and my fingers reaching for his belt, he’d already shed my outer skin. Folded it, tucked it away: my jacket over his desk chair and my shirt on a coat hanger. I could hear the shower running. Ren was probably quietly washing his hair and standing under the water, perfectly content and fine with what had happened. And I was. I’m sure I was. I initiated it, didn’t I? And he asked, he kept asking _are you sure_ and _Goro, don’t you think..._ but it felt good. It was normal, and it wasn’t a big deal. He was fine, showering it away. Showering it away.

I held my hand over my mouth, my lungs shaking under an intensity I couldn’t describe. I wasn’t like Ren, I don’t think I could ever be. Shido hung around my neck, my shoulders, compressing my breathing and murmuring into my ear. With Shido, I left myself. I abandoned whoever  myself was and returned only when I had to. If I came, that was fine. If I didn’t, sometimes it was preferable. I just was, and had to be.

Ren starts humming. I hear it float distantly down the hall and it’s whatever he was humming when I woke plastered to his chest just a half hour ago.

Somewhere, somewhere along the way I got lost. Somewhere there’s a soul waiting for its corpse.

And here I am, dragging around the scent of decay.

The mug I’m handed is red and handmade, the ceramic glaze precisely spread but spotting in a few areas, and the handle and lip just the smallest amount wobbly. I laugh a little, and Ren stays leaned into my space. We’re both warm and fresh, but barefoot on the tile of his kitchen. His hair is curling around his ears and he let me borrow a straightener Ann kept here.

“Did Yusuke make this?”, I ask, tracing a chip. “I have one too.”

“Yeah?”, he smiles, “what colour?”

“Sort of orange.” The coffee is smooth and milky, sweet. A far call from my usual.

“Like it?”

I hum. And then after a moment lean my head against Ren’s arm. He seems to take a shaky laugh, smoothing a hand up my spine.

“That’s reassuring.”

I get to watch out his morning from there on. Things I’d already peeked in on, suddenly alive. Suddenly with a fidgety kiss interjected here and there. I laugh at him from the bed at some point as he scrutinises a pair of jeans, and he looks ridiculous as he smiles up at me, half naked and hair wild.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you smile this much in one sitting ever”, he says as he locks the door behind us. I’m fiddling my gloves back on. How strange it is to return back to ones own shell. “Not that it’s a bad thing”, he’s quick to say, bumping our shoulders as we head to the elevator. “I like your smile.”

“It’s your fault”, I tell him, but that just makes him smile wider.

My phone rings as I’m trying to disentangle Ren away from me in the parking lot, a laugh half-caught in my throat as his nose bumps my ear—

“I can get you half an hour with the scene if you get here now”, Makoto says sternly, but there’s an edge to her voice that’s worries me. “The higher ups are threatening to step in.”

“Something’s changed”, I echo her thoughts blandly, Ren coming to an abrupt stop as my whole body tenses. My hand is limp on his bicep. “Send me the address, I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“Be here  sooner .”

She hangs up and for a moment I can already feel the weight of what’s to come. How quickly the peace has been broken. My phone buzzes with a text and Ren’s face swims before me, his hands coming up to settle on either side of my neck.

“Hey, hey—”

“I have to go”, I force out. But I’m holding onto his wrists, holding onto me. He’s frowning, mouth turned down and eyebrows furrowed.

“Okay. Do you want me to drive you?”

For a fluttering, awful moment I hate him. Before him, this would have been another day, another case. Before him, I wouldn’t be as confused and different as I am now. 

I wouldn’t need him to keep me upright.

“No, it’s alright”, I tell him. “You head to work.”

He hugs me.

“Call me when you’re done, okay?”, he’s saying into my hair. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Anything. I need a lot of things, apparently.

If I asked him to take me away, would he?

I’ve always been impulsive. Only now it’s hard to hide.

* * *

“Your timing sucks”, Makoto says, passing me a short stack of photos enter into the small house. “Like really, honest to god, sucks.”

“How long do I have?”

She checks her watch and I take off my gloves, tucking the photos into my jacket. “10 minutes.”

The bedroom is cordoned off and reeks of both decay and sweetness. The sheets are stained red, still wet with blood. So much blood wasted, I think.

“The victim put up more of a fight than our killer was expecting”, Makoto leans in the doorway. “I’ve actually heard of him in a few aikido circles. His girlfriend got home before any major mutilation or relative clean-up could be done.” My hand pauses over a cracked bottle of perfume. I turn away, pulling the photos out of my pocket and flicking through them.

“There hasn’t been a male for a while”, Makoto points out.

“He’s never been gender exclusive”, I mutter, “he wasn’t in a hurry, either. He was angry.”

“You’re saying this is a crime of passion?”

“I’m _saying_ —”, I rub my eyes, the photos crinkling in my hand. “I’m saying he was agitated. Maybe the media ruffled his ego the wrong way or the police are getting too involved, I don’t know. Your monster doesn’t like wasted blood.”

“No, he doesn’t.” She pauses. “You’re dressed different.”

“New boots”, I wiggle a foot at her, concentrated on the photo. Maybe I could be like Haru. “I was wearing them last night.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice.” I tap the photos against my hand, pointing them at her.

“Speaking of, why did you show Haru pictures of the last victim?” Makoto frowns.

“She asked. And she’s still listed as a civilian informant so it’s entirely legal.”

“You wanted to protect her from seeing it before, though.”

“I’ll send you the statement the girlfriend made and you can compare it to whatever you find here”, Makoto diverts. “Time to go. The photos are yours to keep, I made those copies for you.”

* * *

I remember once waking beneath a blanket of stars. It took me a moment to realise it was my own spotting vision beneath the reprieve of my comforter. It took me a moment to realise it was the remnants of the torn stickers from my ceiling, once stuck on with the giddy excuse of feeling closer when miles away, now the redefined reminder of another self. Another time that mattered. Another time where the stars mightn’t have been removed. It took me a moment to realise I was dreaming, and that I had yet to open my eyes to the new Monday morning.

I spend the next two days dreaming about blood. Taking out my bins and washing, re-washing my clothes. I feel bugged after leaving the crime scene, stained in ways of invisible ink. When it rains, it rains. It rains and I open all of my windows. A damp smell permeates the apartment, chilling the laminate floors and creeping cold into the empty corners. I stare. It’s meant to be hotter weather now, isn’t it? There was a heat wave scheduled some time this week. Some part of me stays asleep on the couch, blanket tugged to his chin, the lamp light low and warm in the lounge. Clouds are heady overhead but the brilliant orange of the sky breaks through, and it rains. It doesn’t stop raining. I feel everywhere and nowhere; torn between every room and with a hand on every doorknob. The birds are so soft, so quiet, this early, and the world still revolves. Night still turns to day. I lay back on the couch, the television on quiet, and think about death.

Shido’s secretary calls me to schedule a meeting, and I realise I haven’t thought about Futaba Sakura in days.

* * *

“I’m not sure how to deal with it most days”, the boy tells the group. Manzo, I think his name is. Manzo with the rapist brother. “I have to be in the same house as him every day. I have to walk to school with him. I have to pretend like what he did was nothing. Like I don’t remember, but I do.”

Ren, for a rare moment, speaks up softly.

“I think all of us can understand what it feels like to be trapped in a situation you can’t get out of. What you have to remind yourself, is that there is always a way out. There are always people on your side”, he gestures out to the group, “Have you considered speaking with your parents?” Manzo shakes his head almost violently and the other boy beside him, Uta with the abusive ex-girlfriend, sets a hand on his shoulder. I glance at Ren as he crosses the circle, kneeling down to see the boys face. 

“I understand”, he says softly and holds out his hands, Manzo shakily placing his own there. Ren’s hands envelop his, squeeze slightly. “You’re so young. It’s so hard to imagine you’ll ever get out of that place but you will. You will”, he repeats. “You’re so much stronger than you give yourself credit for, Manzo. You made it here. You’ve made a group of friends, who understand and support you, and who would be there for you at a moments notice.” There’s a murmur of assent across the room. “Don’t give your brother the satisfaction of knowing he’s won. He hasn’t taken anything from you that mattered because you’re still here.”

Manzo cries snotty tears and nods appreciatively. The session continues.

Towards the end, Ann passes out lollipops with little tags attached.  _Good work today! Every day is better than the last! The sun will rise again tomorrow!_ There’s a crudely drawn stick figure on mine that wears a cape and has a suspiciously familiar hairstyle. I pocket the treat and head over to where Ren is crouched over a short table.

“Do you really believe what you tell them?”, I ask, peering over his shoulder as he scribbles out an array of contact details on a neon pink notepad. The pen is pink, too, so I can only assume both are Ann’s.

“There’d be no point if I didn’t”, he replies and stands properly, tearing the paper off and folding it in two. “Safe houses, if Manzo needs them”, he explains, catching my interest. I open my mouth to say something but stop, catch my tongue on my teeth.

“I’m sorry”, I hesitate, “for not calling.” Ren just quirks a smile, if a little awkward.

“It takes two to tango. I’m just assuming work took precedent and you aren’t a one-night-stand kind of guy.”

I lean against the table beside him, weirdly fidgety. I’d forgone gloves today, choosing to favour my pockets or to just cross my arms like an unruly teen instead.

“You’re very nice to me. I’m not exactly used to that.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Aren’t I?”

“I mean whoever it is that you’re comparing me to”, Ren says pointedly, but soft. “Only if you want to.”

“I don’t think I do.” I swallow, stare upwards. “Not now, at least.”

“That’s fine too.”

“Are you upset that I don’t talk to the group?”, I ask, genuinely curious. He leans back, gaze wandering to the mix of teenagers and young adults eating cake and drinking what Ren called ‘the best decaf you’ll find from here to, like, New York’. Of course everyone believed him. Ren was like that.

“I’m not upset”, he starts carefully. “I guess I wish I knew how to help you. That’s my own fault, though. I can’t help everybody.” He glances at me. “I certainly can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. Have you found what you’re looking for, yet?”

“I don’t know”, I answered. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

We stood in silence for a while. In my pocket, I fiddled with the wrapper of the candy Ann handed out. Eventually Ren sighed, but it sounded humoured.

“Stop me if I’m being nosy”, he says, “but I think you need to realise that a relationship doesn’t have to be a transaction. You don’t need to give me anything for me to keep liking you, same as you don’t have to take anything away. I was hoping you’d know enough about me by now to know that the only thing I expect of you is to be you.” He smiles. “You can like someone just for liking them”, he reminds me. “It’s that simple.”

Ren leans against my side, a warmth I missed. Elbow to elbow to shoulder to shoulder. He knew me. The thought burned in my mind. He _knows_ me, likes me anyway.

“You like me”, I repeat.

“So much”, he drawls, grinning. “I also like it when you wear those boots, makes you taller than me. I like that.”

“I like you”, I say, and oh, _oh_ —

it is that easy.

* * *

“Pretty morbid to bring that into my bed”, Ren mumbles against my shoulder and I scoff, elbow him away. The photo in my hand folds, hiding the mutilated body from sight.

“It’s been bothering me, I feel like there’s something I’m missing.” Ren makes a snuffly noise, pressing his chest closer to my back.

“If this was a detective novel I’d say some weird observation and it would spark an idea in your brain and you’d get up and fumble around for your clothes before kissing me goodbye.” I place the photo face down on his bedside table and roll to curl in his arms.

“Lucky it’s not, then. You’ve got me for the rest of the night.” Ren laughs and pulls me closer by the hip.

“What about tomorrow?”

“Work, and profusely apologising to Ann for not replying to her texts.”

“You’re fucked.” My toes curl as his mouth drags down to my neck, a warm feeling in my stomach.

“Ren”, I sigh, his hand, warm and large, pulls my thigh closer, the ball of my foot pressing to his calf, my hands curling tight on his chest.

I love how he feels. Warm, solid, sweating. There’s no distance between us. There’s no underlying sour. His breath is hot over my lips.

“I love how you feel”, he says, echoing my thoughts completely.

* * *

I’m still touching the little bruises Ren left on me the next day. A shared shower this time, a quick maul against the fridge—I shift and I can feel where the kitchen counter had pressed into my lower back. I like this rumination, this different kind of infatuation. He’s run down to the corner store and I’m washing the sweat off of my clothes, watching his linen tumble in the dryer. 

I unfold the photo and stare at it again. 

_It’s you_ , my mind buzzes. _You_. A fuzzy haze for the others suddenly very clear on this one corpse. But why? Why him? My fingers, circling my jaw, prod at my lip that’s still healing, a little swelled from last night but evidence of the way Shido had punished me. Because thats what it was, wasn’t it? A punishment, an annoyance. Something made him angry and I’m a recreational facility for him to... facilitate. Why was he angry? Nothing I did...

The machine beeps. I let go of my lip.

* * *

(I barely remember falling asleep on Ann’s shoulder. It’s just a hazy memory of her perfume and whatever had been playing on the television. Her breathing is calm and slow when I open my eyes, but she’s awake. My mouth is dry with sleep and her skin feels warm against my cheek. She’s scrolling through some messages on her phone, cherry red nails glinting against the blue glow of her screen and the street lamp outside. Her toes painted teal. It’s a choice, to reach out then. My hands are tucked under my own arms but I lean further against her, close my eyes again. I see her life in rouge and in rosehip moisturiser, I see her first scraped knee and I see her shared kisses with Shiho—Shiho who she would die for, who she would live for, who she would love and love until the word lost all meaning, and she was confident it never would.

“I know you’re awake”, she says, amused. She double taps on a video of a cat knocking over a glass of water. “Want to watch another episode?”

This is what it’s like to be God, perhaps. Not Shido’s distortion, not my gift, but having the gift to perceive perspective, to see love in all form it comes. A privy nature. A private smile. I considered kissing Ann, for a moment. Leaning over and closing my eyes, wondering what it would be like to love someone like her, love a girl, to love myself through her eyes. I know it wouldn’t be right. Whatever that’s in me—it’s misplaced emotion, it doesn’t know how to define boundaries, it hungers where I might never be full.

Maybe... maybe there’s something to heal, here. Maybe I do have something to say at those group meetings. Healing, if this is healing, feels a lot like going forwards and going backwards and going back to the beginning before skipping straight to the end and pretending everything’s fine until it’s not. And starting over again.

“Sure.”)

* * *

“I know I didn’t give you a time limit”, Shido says, “but you’re usually more prompt.”

It is said under the shade of an umbrella as the rain wails on overhead. It quickly dampens my coat and my hair, eradicating evidence of any extraneous activities that occurred within the past 20 minutes.

“She is a well-guarded person”, I reason.

“A week”, Shido says. “If you haven’t found her within the week.”

* * *

“You’re late”, and if there is anything as worse as the worst thing in the world, Makoto Niijima believes it is being late. “I ordered for you.”

“Thank you.” I slide into the booth seat, unwrapping my scarf from my neck and setting it aside. I pull off my gloves as the steam from thin cups of green tea leave condensation on our shared plates. The rain has sodden my clothes and I can already feel my hair curling around my ears. “Did you hear back about the case in Kanda?”

“No, what happened?” I snap open a pair of chopsticks, crumpling the paper.

“The matter was dealt with. The restaurant is up and running again—she claims it was the work of a partially deaf warlock.”

“How diligent of them to defend those who cannot defend themselves.”

“Defence aids no one when prosecution is viable.”

“When I first met Goro Akechi he told me he wanted to be a defence attorney”, Makoto pointed at me with her own chopsticks and I batted them away, going to grab a piece of steamed fish. “What happened to him?”

“Time changes people”, I offer blandly. “My view of the world is much different than what it was when I was a child.”

“You’re still a child”, she busies herself with frying a slice of steak. “A child in a very meticulous, very well-made suit.”

“A clever analogy, as always. However, aren’t we all parading behind our own masks?” A strip of fatty tuna goes into my mouth. She watches. “We would not be human otherwise.”

“How goes your other investigation? I forgot to ask.” She redirects the conversation, practiced at picking for what she wants. “Haru was at a benefit the other night and said she saw members of your political party who seemed”, she stews her words for a moment, “less than pleased.”

“Is there _ever_ a political party happy?”, Makoto then muses. “I don’t think so. The public more often reflect who they choose to represent.”

“The public cling for any kind of hope they are able in worlds such as ours. It’s why political sway is so easy to gain—“, I pull the lid off of a wicker steamer, putting a dumpling on each of our plates, “empty promises. It was better before the existence of other kinds were realised. We had stories of phantom thieves and witches to keep rotten children at bay. Those rotten children are now running our government.”

“You’re chatty tonight.”

“Did you slip something into my rice?”

Her heel kicks me under the table and she shares an annoyed look. I steal a section of greens from her plate and transfer them to mine.

“Politicians are terrible men”, I say behind a mouthful. “Police, too. Terrible things happen to terrible men. I imagine one day the victims will simply grow tired of the treatment they are receiving and take things into their own hands—it’s not uncommon.”

“Why do we never have normal conversations?”, Makoto questions. 

“Neither of us is well equipped for normal conversations without a third person buffer.” Makoto relents a nod and I continue. “Anyway, I’m waiting for you to ask me what you want to ask. You only invite me to dinner when I’ve done something wrong.”

“You still haven’t sent me a file of your findings at the last murder.”

“Oh, didn’t I?”

A waitress comes by and fills the empty glasses at our elbows with water, leaving with a nod. Makoto has set her utensils down and is staring out at me.

“You’re usually diligent about these things.”

“I _am_ diligent”, I correct needlessly, it works in her favour.

“So what’s changed?”

“You have your interrogation voice on.”

“I want to ask you about the work you do.”

Now it is my turn to put my chopsticks down and ready myself for attack. _Barricade the doors, clamp tight on the tongue, don’t let the brain go into overload lest the truth slip in or out._

What do I know, though? I barely know what I want, what I need. She said it herself once before— _ you don’t know anything. _

“Are you investigating me?”, I ask. 

“Do you need to be investigated?”

Match. Point. A waitress with napkins heading our way seemed to pick up on the mood fairly quickly and diverted to a different table. 

“I don’t know what’s in those files Shido gives you, but I’m confident in saying that every time he gives you one, someone ends up dead”, she says lowly. 

“I’m a private detective, Makoto. I find people. What happens after is none of my concern. I’ve also never seen the most recent victims before in my life, so I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“You’re still a potential accomplice to murder in reference to the deaths of several rival parties members”, Makoto says flatly. “You’re listed under Shido’s security department but your annual pay is almost triple. The police will gain headway on all of this soon, and you’re the poster boy for Shido’s party. There’s already rumours in the underworld about the blowout. You’re smart—you know where this is headed.”

“Are you warning me?”

“I suppose you’ll tell me to trust you know your limits.”

“I’m well aware of my limits”, I tell her.

“And what about your safety?”

It’s a good question, one that gives me pause.

“I’ve seen how you are a magnet to many”, she continues. “And I’ve seen the effect of your work up close. None of this is right, Goro, and whatever it is you’re not telling me about these recent killings is no better in the hands of people with misplaced intentions who have been using you for years.” Her eyes harden. “You say you respect me as a colleague, but do you _trust_ me?”

Do you ever just want to run?

“At least consider my words when I say that whatever deal it is you have with Shido, it is not worth it.” Her gaze is firm, pins me down.“Your credibility, your reputation will suffer if certain suspicions come to light—“, _and they will_ is left unsaid. “There is a way out of this, if he has something on you. Go to the police. Go to somebody, Goro. Stop working for him.” But I can’t, is left unsaid.

“I understand”, I say, but it’s an automated response. I’m a phone off the hook.

She sits back and I watch the pieces of her mask fall back into place, her shoulders tight under the weight of her suit.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

“It’s a deal.” I offer my hand to her, a joking smile on my mouth. She rolls her eyes but shakes my hand. Makoto’s palm is cool, dry against my skin. I notice the moment her brain clicks in realisation:  _he’s not wearing gloves, but he’s not reacting either. He took them off at the start of the meal like he usually does so there can’t be an ulterior motive—surely he wouldn’t betray my trust like that._

I betray her trust like that.

* * *

Sojiro Sakura looks up from his newspaper and cigarette as he sits on the outdoor bench of Leblanc. Yongen glows with late-night bore and he purses his lips at me, balancing the newspaper on his knee.

“At least pay for a cup of coffee if you’re gonna pull a gun on me or something.” 

“I’m not going to pull a gun on you.”

“No?”, Sakura looks surprised and heaves himself out of the chair, stubbing out his cigarette. “Thank God.” The bell rings above him and I follow in, the Sayuri less of a welcome and more like a bad omen beside me. He pulls on an apron in a practiced movement, shifting a jar down in time with my sitting. “You look like a Jamaica Blue kind of kid, am I right?”

“That’s what you served me when I first came here.”

“Sorry, kid. Awful memory.” He’s shorter than last time, abrupt with his words. “What can I do for you? Seeing as you’re not pulling a gun on me and all. You don’t really look like you’re here for the antique atmosphere.”   
  


There’s a twitch in my hand I can’t shake.

“Why does Shido Masayoshi want to know the whereabouts of your daughter?”

Leblanc is silent. The television isn’t even on. The crossword on one of the tables has been covered in scribbles of badly-drawn cats.

“You’re not who I expected”, he says with some deliberation. “When they let me know I had a detective on my tail, I was expecting someone older.”

“I’m old enough.” He leans against the bar with both forearms, a dish towel hooked on his shoulder.

“You’re the kid that Wakaba trained, aren’t you? And you found her for him when she ran.”

The memory is an ice cold shock to my system. My mouth doesn’t cooperate, my fingers tangle in my lap.

“I’m not here to talk about Wakaba.”

“Yeah? Well it’s my shop so I’ll decide what we talk about, if you don’t mind.” He turns to grab a stool that was perched by the stovetop, setting it in front of me and sitting down. He huffs a little, and I get the impression he wishes he didn’t put out his cigarette.

“You can’t be more than 20.”

“I’m 25.”

“Coulda fooled me. So, 25. You were, what, 15 when Wakaba died?”, he rubs his goatee. “10 years of working for that shithead. It’s a wonder you don’t look 50.”

(I’ll look back later and ask Sojiro, _did I really look so bad?_ )

“You’re out of your depth, huh?” He sighs again and braces his hand behind his neck. “Look, kid, Futaba never knew her father. Wakaba never told me who the father was either. So when some guy starts asking around about my kid, on the orders of the same guy who killed her mom? You kind of put two and two together.”

( _Yeah_ , he’ll say. _Yeah, kid. You really did._ )

* * *

Trauma is different for everyone, I know now. Grooming a child to do what you want skews their perception of many things into adulthood. 

Gravel slips wetly under my feet as I reach the shrine. Will she know my face, even after the changes? I’m still the child I was no matter how hard I try. Maybe if I smile she’ll recognise my dimple, the crease of my chin. I need her to know I’m still me.

There’s just greenery and humid air and men who have long since been cursed to be trees for the rest of futility around me. This is the world around us which we see. These are the large, enormous things we ignore. 

“Mom?”

Her grave does not reply. My hands shake, my knees wobble as I sit down.

“Do you not remember me?”, I asked, and my voice sounded so rough. I dug my fingers into my palms, feeling the stretch of bruised skin spread over each knuckle, each joint. “Do you not remember?”, I repeat.

The grave is silent, as most graves are. That does not defer to the point that I would prefer it to stay that way, no matter how much I ask for an answer.

The sky is so dark above me. I feel so lost.

“I’m just like you”, I tell her. No reply. “I’m...”

My own wailing. It’s all I can hear, pounding back into my ears and choking my throat. Everything just hurts. I feel stupid and young and words bleedbetween my teeth, become lodged in my gums somewhere along with the vomit. I ache and I ache but I still can’t get anything out. How long do you have to be in pain before you just stop? How long does it take for a thorn to push itself out of your foot—or does the thorn just _stay?_ I wondered fleetingly, through a daze, if I’d be like Manzo from the support group, trying to understand why someone who should love me, care about me, why they’d do this. I throw up again, a harsh cough of bile and blood. _His blood_ , I think, _his blood, his blood_. I want to cut it out of me. Frantically, I wished I could have had each of my missed periods at once, just so I could get him out of me, get any chance of continuing his genes straight flushed from my body. I wanted to tear my throat open, bite and pull out my tongue. I felt as though there was some sudden filthiness in me that wouldn’t stain what I touched, but stained what touched me. I see outcome and I see event, I see breakfast every morning and I see you untying your shoes at night. But no one could ever look at me, look at my day. Know what I know as I know it now. My mornings and my nights. No one could ask me why I don’t fall asleep until half one in the morning and no one could ask me why I take too long to brush my teeth. No one could ask me why I take my coffee black, why I always cook my rice too little or too long, or why I don’t wear a watch. No one would be able to ask me now why I can’t say the word _father_ without panicking.

(It’s because I can’t read anything but analog).

(It’s because I don’t know how to cook for one).

(It’s because the lack of calories is appealing).

(It’s because I always feel filthy).

(It’s because I can’t sleep). 

(It’s because—)

I hold my hands over my face. I think my eyes might have lost some of their colour, the bags under them gaining leverage. My mouth felt appalling, my stomach molten with shame. My skin was phosphorus, emitting decay. I just want to run. _I want to run I want to run I want to run._ I want to stop crying and I want to _run_.

But I never could run from him.

* * *

**GA:** _ASAP meet me @ Aoyama stn. Bring tooth from twin murder_

* * *

Makoto waits by the stairway, hair slick against her face and an umbrella tucked under her arm. She holds an over-large evidence bag, labelled 3049. At the sight of me, her face pales.

“What happened?”, she demands, “Goro, you look—”

On my tongue lies a hastily prepared speech, a lame attempt at a battle of wits. It’s a rough draft of the truth, but there aren’t any lies. Not like the patchwork story I’ve been telling myself, convincing myself of for years. 

She lets go of the bag.

* * *

Crossroads operating hours are 5 PM to 4 AM. Lala, dressed down to her barest, in some gaudy robe, only looks upset as she lets me in at 4:55 in the morning. The red light district is a blind misery of those falling right asleep and those just waking up, and the small love-seat Lala has me lay on is awfully cramped in her office space. A large mirror decorated one wall, and with her back turned I could see her expression and mine. We looked as bad as each other.

“I’m going to repeat what I told you on the phone”, she said, shaking something out of a small zip lock and into a steaming cup. “This is a bad idea.”

I don’t say anything. When she opens her hand out towards me I pull the crumpled evidence bag from my wet coat pocket and give it to her. She doesn’t scrutinise the label, only plucking the tooth from inside and dropping it into the cup. There’s a short pop, and then nothing. She mutters under her breath and turns to me, holding out the cup.

“You’ll be out for 30 minutes at most. But in there, I can’t be sure. It’s different for each purpose. There’s a reason I stopped doing these for people, you know.”

“I know.” I tilt up from my position to drink and it goes down quickly without an even compression from my throat—as if it wanted to be within me, having a mind of its own.

I close my eyes.

First I feel the salt of a spitting ocean around me.

The boat is large, assuming space through an endless sea. The two of us are close to the edge but he is sitting, one leg hooked over the other with a short table beside him. Clothes are stacked on it. It all reminds me of those cruise ships you read about, the ones festering with infection of both immune systems and gambling.

My feet are bare. The ship goes on.

“I only find within my bones, a taste for eating earth and stones.” The hum of the ship is boarish, alive. “When I feed, I feed on air, rocks and coals and iron ore. My hunger, turn. Hunger, feed. A field of bran.” I walk closer, he’s—he’s sewing. Threading a needle in and out with the assurance of someone who has done it before. “Gather as you can the bright, poison weed. Are you familiar with Rimbaud?”

He doesn’t look up at me, continuing to pull right the thread he inches past a garish hole.

“Not to the extent you seem to be”, I say carefully. He hums.

“When asked to explain his poetic philosophy, he said he was almost incapable of explaining it. His idea was to reach the unknown by derangement of all other senses. To suffer enormously. Under this, presumably the strength of a poet shines—but he maintained he was born a poet. I suppose the strength came after.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“He wanted to be a seer”, Shido continues. “That was his poetic philosophy. He dragged himself through the dirt to see. Every form of love, he said, of suffering, of madness, the unspeakable tortures one might go through where they need every last amount of their superhuman strength, this is how to reach the unknown. How to see. Ruin yourself, and you will be rewarded. A balance of magnificence and disgust to reach true potential.” He sighs, putting the newly sewn shirt down onto the table and pulling up a pair of slacks that has a tear in one of the belt loops. “Such a situation we find ourselves in”, he comments. “I suppose you’ve always been so meddlesome.”

“You raised me”, my voice comes out cracked. “Blame yourself.” He stops, considers this.

“I suppose I did”, he replies with some humour, continuing his task, “Unorthodox as it was. I hear it’s during the teenage years children are most impressionable, but who really knows.”

“They were the worst years of my life.”

“Looking back now they are”, Shido corrects, holding up a finger. “With your new perceptions. However, whatever can happen, will happen. And whatever has happened, has also already happened. You had a roof over your head. You had companionship. You had exemplary academic possibilities. You had enough food to keep you full until death—”

“If I had tried to leave, would you have let me?”, I cut in. “If I had torn up the contract and just left, gone back to Okinawa?”

“I’m not that awful of a father.” My heart lurches in my throat. “We would have met again later, eventually. All of this—”, he waves his needle around. “All of the rest was extra. Honing your use.”

“But why?”, my voice cracks in two. “Why?”

“You sound like your siblings”, he muses. “I don’t have any answers that could satisfy you, so don’t waste your breath with trying.” He grins sharp, his head ducking as he considers adjusting the waistband of the pants. “I wanted you to be perfect. Could you accept that as my philosophy?”

“Was raping me a vital part of your philosophy?”

“The price of your consent is nothing owed. After all, you’ve never been opposed.”

“I was a child.”

“Age is irrelevant in the underworld”, he dismisses. “There are beings eons old walking the streets with a face of 25”, he tilts his head, pausing, eyes fluttering shut briefly. “You were so very thin, so malleable. Eager to please.” His eyes open again. “You’re hardly a child anymore. You seem to enjoy yourself just fine. Don’t act so abhorred, you knew, deep down. The same way your brothers and sisters know who I am as their blood drains out of them, and back into me.” His voice softens toward the end, a sharp caricature of compassion.

“If I had known I would have run the moment you sat across from me that day”, my voice shakes. He smiles.

“God abandons us the day we are born”, Shido is quick to say, “and he watched as you came back to me. Your creator. You’re the first one, did you know? The first one to ever find me, even if you didn’t know it at the time. I was impressed.”

“I never came to you.”

“You came to me”, Shido repeats. “For me, with me.”

“You approached me with work”, I hiss. “You asked for my expertise.”

His hands stop moving, eyes staring blandly at me without the frame of his glasses. “And blood calls to blood. You were a whole island away, you could have lived a very ordinary life, away from Tokyo, and yet you sought me out.” He resumes, a small musicality under his words as he says: “The others had such little of me in them, and yet you retained a gift. The only one to do so—”

“I prefer to assume I inherited it from my mother”, I snap and he smiles, genially.

“And how beautiful she was. You used to look so much like her. Do you know who actually named you?”

“Stop it.

“It’s not your grandmother’s name, no. It’s not even close—”

_“Stop!”_ My hands are shaking as I slam the table aside, my hands are shaking as he calmly sets his things in his lap. “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands”, I whisper to him, my voice barely carrying across the deck. “I’m going to _kill_ you. I’m going to watch the life drain from your fucking eyes.”

Shido sits back and smiles: the picture perfect pose for a holiday postcard.

“That’s my girl.” He closes his eyes again and breathes deep for a moment, fingers curling around the thin needle in his hand. “I feel each of them inside of me, it’s almost ticklish. I wonder if you’ll glow beneath my hands. You’ve always shone so brightly.”

I swallow thickly. “You plan to kill me soon, then?”

“Soon enough”, he blinks slowly. “After all, you’re the treasure at the end of all of this, Takara. We savour the things we love, down to the very last drop.”

I open my eyes through a dry sweat, choking on my own vomit or sea water or incense. I shook my head but the motion made everything spin, the room losing its sharpness. I dug my fingers into the low couch, hoping to stop my vertigo. I just wanted to stop, to throw up everything inside of me. Lala placed a hand on my back and rubbed small circles between my shoulder blades, the sensation keeping the spreading numbness from enveloping all of me. I let myself lean forward, trying to control the involuntary lurching as I choked and gagged. She tucked my hair behind my ear, smoothing strands over the wet nape of my neck. Through my own haze, I couldn’t help but notice how underwhelming she seemed without her usual façade. Her lips were pale, torn down, and there was an familiar exhaustion as she looked at me.

“I hope it was worth it.”

* * *

Tell me if I’m the only one, but—

I was once laying on his bed, my legs spread a fraction wide, unpolished, light hair on my thighs, my small breasts a symptom of my undernourishment. I watched his chest rise and fall across the room, for once his shoulders were not tense. There was a slackness in his jaw that I did not understand. I felt like a non-transmission screen, thick coloured lines just glaring, waiting to be descrambled. I wanted to feel anything. I wanted to feel full.

He had this way of running his scissors up my seams, wrenching out the polyester mix and shoving something denser inside—memory foam. 

Locked in his loft for as long as I was, learning chess and honing craft, living on some nocturnal level but not quite living at all, where I was taught English and politics and the modicums of manipulation—from a manipulator, no less, I learned there how I really was just a waiting tomb. No guise, no guide, nothing to force my path askew and nothing to peak my interest. I had walls and windows and a spot by the door to wait for my owner to come home. At least that’s how it felt. 

I took his files like a starving artist takes commissions. He said so. 

Then he said: _what makes you full if not food? If not shelter? What makes you full if not a life to live and star in? A god to sit under?_

Purpose is undefined and completely irreligious, I’d decided. In my life before Goro Akechi, in the steps I’d measured, I’d only learnt of what could be taken from you, and how they only mattered when they were gone. Purpose didn’t matter unless you stewed within purposelessness and he took my chin between his fingers, tilted me one way and then the other. He said: _talk me through your words, draw your visions._

If I’d seen the future, I could have drawn: _this is the carpet and where the stain on the carpet will be and this is the loose thread of the carpet aside the desk inside the room of the building that you are going to die in._ If I’d seen the future, I could have said: _there will just be so much white noise when you die, why do I get all the white noise? and where does all the white noise go when it’s not listening to me?_ If I’d seen the future, I could have cried: _what did you get out of fucking me?_

_Power? Power? Power?_

I learned to travel with my hands in my pockets, my hands in gloves in my pockets, an overcoat ideal even on the hottest of days. He said, after the vocal coaching and the phalloplasty and the top-surgery and the injections, he said: _are you full, yet?_

If I’d seen the future, perhaps I would have asked myself: _what did you get out of saying no to him? What did you get out of spreading your legs after?_

When I turned 18 he bought me an apartment, bought my life again. He showed me three keys and handed me two.

Now, tell me if I’m the only one, but—

Nothing really needed to be said, after that.

I reached the top floor with little announcement. The halls barren and dark, the sunrise still inching through the gloss windows. Everyone is at home, but I can feel Shido’s presence like a thrum under my skin. It made sense to me now why I always felt I was with him, and he with me. He is my blood, true in fact, and I’m left to wonder if my half-brothers and sisters ever dreamed of him in the same way I did—this dark and haunting figure, something straight out of a classical horror.

The weight of the talisman Lala slipped in my breast pocket is barely there, unacknowledgable.

Tonight, it feels like magic has no time to be here. Spells and curses are just daydreams. It is me, and my father, and the narcissism in which he possesses, curled tight and wound around his fist like a whip.

“You’re later than I imagined you’d be”, he says when I push open the door to his office. “I was hoping for moonlight.”

The door cracks shut behind me. “I know better.”

“You know better”, he repeats. “Familiarity and conditioning breeds comfort and a sense of safety. I made you reliant of me in a number of ways to ensure loyalty for as long as I needed it. If you knew better, you’d have run the moment you saw me.”

I watch him take off his cuff links one by one. The green gems, so dark they were almost black—

“Moldovite”, I said, and he smiled faintly as he set them on the desk, adjusting his shirt sleeves to roll halfway up his arm.

“Very good.”

His posture was so relaxed, then. So calm and regular that I’d have been a fool to relax with it.

I knew what was coming the same way you know a fist is flying towards your face.

I managed to dodge the first lunge but poorly, his arm darting out to slam me down to the desk. I felt my breath give out instantly, his nails, sharp talons, digging into the tendons of my neck with a predatory instinct. A low hum throbbed in my ears, spit slick down my mouth and neck. Briefly, like a flutter of a thought, I wondered if my eyes were just going to pop. I briefly wondered if I wanted to die, if just to know what it felt like when the rest of them slid away to that sunken place in his heart.

And then he let me in.

It was like a cold rush, a searing hot iron, all at once. The women, the men, the children, Wakaba, my mother—the blood, the blood, the blood. How many he has killed. How long he has known of who I am. All the blank spots, the empty pockets he left and portrayed. They’re gone now. I cried.

He is a monster.

His snarl was feral as I kicked out at him. The room held no reprieve from his aura, completely dark and damp and boorish, even when he let go of my neck I felt as though I was choking. My fingers and legs shook with adrenaline as I grappled to find any strength I had—he swung at me again, faster, faster, I toppled over his desk and heard the sharp clash of glass hitting the floor. Bottles thudding to the stretch of carpet. Tea cups. _Faster, faster._ My head hit the edge of the bar with a hollow thud and he was on top of me, dragging me into place, my brain still trying to discard the fizzing paralysis that tingled my neck.

“How much sweeter you’ll be now”, he whispered hoarsely, hand fisted in my hair. “A perfect cultivation. I’ll have to do this again and you—”, his knee pressed into my ribs as I tried to shove him off, a frantic sound escaping me. “You get to watch. You get to stay with me.” My teeth ached, my head pounded. “Maybe you’ll find your mother once more, hm?” _Faster, faster_ my heart screamed. His eyes flashed gold, and I couldn’t remember the last time I blinked, suddenly dumbfounded at the sight of him above me. “Takara, how special you’ve been.”

He hissed as the bottle collided with his skull, glass and bourbon exploding everywhere as I rolled out from under him. I lunged quickly for another, throwing it backwards as his fingers pulled taught against my ankle. His shirt was drenched with blood and booze, his glasses cracked and wayward.

Now, tell me if I’m the only one, but—

Over and over and over again I slammed the lamp base into his head. He hit the floor and I crowded him, crowded him as he had crowded me so many times before. I was beginning to wheeze, my ribs protesting with each breath I took. I felt as though my brain was on fire, my thoughts catching alight before they could even form.

He grinned crooked, spat blood.

“I told you”, my voice was shaky, my knees tight on either side of his torso. His left eye was the colour of a cherry, tears of blood dazedly making their way to his mouth, his ear. “I _told_ you I was going to kill you. I was going to watch the life drain from your eyes.”

“Then watch”, he croaked.

I bludgeoned him to death

I’m throwing up in a corner as an ambulance wails past, painting the plain walls around us a frantic red and blue, but they’re gone as soon as they came. Sweat and blood drips into my eyes, and my lip feels swollen, my body deformed. I look. He’s still staring at me with that dead look on his face. _Dead serious_ , Ann would say, posing for another picture. _Dead sexy. Dead set._ I look away, tuck my head between my knees, thread my fingers in my hair, and pull.

Here I am, inhaling the blood of his skin.

Here I am, smashing another bottle of alcohol to the ground.

An amputation shouldn’t be this hard, I think, shaking out a bottle of vodka over his body, over the blood stained carpet. I should be able to jimmy him out, this dead doornail, I should have done it years ago, before I got tetanus and blew my immune system to shit.

I could never get rid of him, though. People like him, young girls like me, men like me, people like me—no doesn’t exist in our vocabularies. Nobody likes saying _no_.

As his body continued to soak that 2.5 million yen, rich and luxe carpet, I stared at his chair, at his desk. Smears of my blood, our blood, decorated the office red as elegantly as any love-motel room he’d taken me to. My fingers felt oddly still, my body strangely cool despite how hot I was running. In a few minutes, I knew the adrenaline would leave me. Useless thing, adrenaline. I wanted to go on like this forever if I could. Ignore the consequences. Just run and run and run, a different run this time. A successful escape. My limbs were growing heavy. I walked over to his chair, smooth brown leather, a high back, gold accents. I picked it up and slammed it as hard as I could against the desk. Again and again, my grip slipping and fingers catching, being crushed, wood chips splintering, but again and again until the desk just cracked. My fingers shook as I pulled open a cracked drawer, taking his antique cigarette lighter that you had to click twice for it to work.

Once.

Twice.

I almost feel myself make an aborted movement to reach for him, blood calls to blood calls to blood calls to blood—but he’s already gone, suffering perpetual heatstroke as his soul goes through the floor. It’s at this moment I realise the smell of the smoke, the burnt plastic, the faint flesh, and no amount of blood will ever be enough to seal the taxidermy that’s left of us. I am a body stressed, dressed in rags. He’ll soon be nothing but ash on the floorboards. To just be a body, I think, takes so much effort. I wonder how much effort it is to be a corpse.

But I know.

Here I am, inhaling the summer heat off his skin.

Here I am, letting him inside me again.

* * *

I felt ghostly, almost, as if the light of the moon couldn’t touch me at all. I sat in the back of the ambulance and listened to the rain, oh how much it had rained lately, and thought about the body bag across the parking lot from me. They’d poked and prodded me, gave me oxygen, taped my ribs, stitched a cut in my eyebrow, thrown a blanket on my shoulders and said just try to breathe. I stared at the same spot of blood on my shoe, looked back at the body bag, looked back at my shoe. 

Makoto eventually found her way over to me, her heels clicking against the tarmac and stopping just shy of the ambulance. After a moments contemplation, she got in and sat beside me. I wanted to reach out then and touch him, just to get some scope of what he was feeling. Just to ignore what I was feeling, and to forget the residual warmth of what Shido left me with, what he stared at me with, what taste he left in my mouth.

Pride.

“He left a cigarette lit in his office while he was passed out drunk”, Makoto tells me. “That’s what the media will hear and that’s all the media will know.”

“What about me?”

Her glance towards me is something I can’t describe, a twist of pity and guilt but something harsh. Something disappointed.

“You aren’t here”, she replies. “You’re at home with your boyfriend, recovering from an assault you suffered while on the job. You filed a complaint with your HR office three days ago and have since then filed to leave your position on company security.”

My tongue feels dry, ashy. “Makoto.”

“I’ve called Ren to come and pick you up”, she continues, “next month, you’ll start work with your new mentor, Sae Niijima, in preparation for your studies as a defence attorney.”

“Why are you protecting me?”, I whisper. You should be arresting me. I’m a killer.”

She’s quiet, folding and refolding her hands in her lap. The sun is quiet in the sky, still rising, and it makes the teal in her pinstripe pants iridescent. She looks at me, and she looks tired. “I’m doing what I can”, she says.

Smoke continues to rise above what was left of the top level of the building. Like a haze which glowed above such bewitching scenes in sparkly, old-time movies, like the glare of bubbles in the air and the painted backdrops of a place so other than here. The smoke rose and rose. It wouldn’t stop rising.

I lean my head on Makoto’s arm and her arm comes easily around me, a practiced move to comfort victims, but she tugs the blanket around me tighter.

“Sae’s a prosecutor”, I say eventually, “shouldn’t I be working under a defence attorney?” She cracks a smile at this.

“I thought so, but you’ll find she insisted that you work under her. You’ll probably learn more, working with the enemy.”

I look out at the parking lot. The body bag is gone.

“Maybe.”

Makoto unclamped my fingers to tangle them with hers, the sternness on her face another learned trait.

“He’s not coming back”, she said. “If there’s one sure thing in this world, it’s death.”

She believed it.

“Maybe we should go back to law school together”, I suggested. “You’ve got wrinkles from this job.”

“I’ve got wrinkles from you”, she retorts. “You make everything a competition.”

“Pot, kettle.”

We watched the police and firefighters move systematically.

“Maybe”, Makoto said.

As the hour hit 7, Ren found us and breathed a short sigh of relief, his arms catching around me as I stood away from Makoto. He was cold, hair still damp. He must’ve showered.

“You’re okay”, he said against my cheek. “You’re okay.”

* * *

In the car ride back, I stared up at the car roof with the same detachment I felt I had stared at the network of cracks my own bedroom ceiling had become home to. Wrinkles and lines where the unit had settled over the decades and put the plaster under strain. I’d seen a thousand different terrors in my own ceiling, but right now I could only see the mundane reality of uneven car upholstery and those handles above the window nobody really used. Ren breathed softly beside me, hands flexed at either ends of the wheel, bathed in the warm glow of a new morning. His bed, I remembered, was much softer than mine or any car seat could ever be. The ice pack a medic gave me continued to melt at my feet and I caught Ren glancing at me.

“What?”, I said quietly.

“You look like you’re going to throw up.”

“Maybe”, I say uneasily. “Ren, I killed him.”

“He was going to kill you”, Ren says firmly.

There’s a moment of silence as a truck blares past us and I’m not sure what to do. My hands, when I look down at them, are red and shaking. The bandaids are already curling away from my clammy skin. Is this really who I am, underneath? Is this who I’ve been all along? His girl?

Ren’s hand is surprisingly soft on my knee, squeezing once.

“Close your eyes, maybe you can get a little rest.”

I do close my eyes.

I forgot what it was like to not see anything behind my eyelids but the dark.

* * *

“Your hair’s red.”

She stops fiddling with her shoelaces, tucking her chin on her knees. Her nails are chewed down, I notice as she picks a strand of her hair and twirls it. Her cheek has acne scars.

”Yeah”, she replies, “Recessive genes or some shit, I guess.”

“You don’t dye it?”

“Nope.”

Yongen is sunny today, and passerby walk with a lightness to their steps. I’m not at all convinced that one death could create such an impact, but it hasn’t rained in weeks. Tokyo feels less like its drowning, less like the water level is rising, and it feels more like a city. A home.

“So”, she says, “small world.”

Her voice is as soft as mine once was. From an outsiders perspective, I think we might share the same jaw, the same brow bone. I pick at the sleeve of my sweater. The wool keeps sticking to the brick wall behind us but she’d said, vaguely, that the outdoor chairs were too uncomfortable, before sitting herself on the ground.

“I suppose it is.”

“You like Featherman?”

“Yes”, I blink quickly. “Uh, I watched it a lot as a kid.”

“Cool, cool”, she nods. “Fuck, this is awkward.”

“Maybe it would be easier if we got your questions out of the way.”

“What, you don’t have any questions for me? Questions that aren’t pertaining to my general, awesome appearance?”

I give her a wry smile and she mirrors it a little, looking back at her shoes and twisting the laces around again.

“What was he like?” 

I swallow and it’s almost like I can taste the ash in my mouth again. I swallow and it’s not there. I drag my fingers on my jeans.

“It doesn’t matter what he was like”, I tell her. “You’re not him. You might share the same blood, but he didn’t raise you. You aren’t even comparable.

“...What about you?”

I lean my head against the wall. “I’m not sure. When I was very young and very foolish he offered me things I could only dream of. I can’t promise you I’m not like him in a number of ways.” I chance a look at her, she’s tracing the lines on her socks. “I’m sorry about your mother. I helped him find her.” 

“You didn’t know”, she shrugs. “Like you said, you were a kid. You didn’t realise until it was too late. Sorry about your mom, too”, she adds.

“Thank you.”

She tilts her head towards me, the sun catching her glasses and causing a glare.

“I’m Futaba, by the way. Guess you already knew that.”

“Goro”, I echo and feel a short laugh climb my throat. “It’s good to meet you, finally.”

**Author's Note:**

> title and starting quote taken from arthur rimbaud’s poem ‘song of the highest tower’, but the one shido references is ‘hunger’  
> not sure what i was thinking while writing this. a lot of the time i get stuck on trying to write what things i’m feeling but there always seems to be too many ways to say them. i wrote it in a week through a very persistent migraine and just wanted to publish it as soon as possible so i wouldn’t have to think of it again. i hope that at least there is a message within this that resonates with you and that you enjoyed reading it. pls consider donating to my kofi below.
> 
> ko-fi.com/tnevmucric


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